


Bonds of Blood and Henna

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Outlands [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Complete Bastardization of Physics, Fiction Fantasy, Fish out of Water, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Mathematical Magic, Pre-BC history put through a blender, Serious Injuries, Trans-dimensional monsters and all that sort of fun stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26665531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: (The next arc of Outlands)Ryou is Assyrian now for all intent and purposes. Sura is his home, Darius is his life and future, there is no more looking back.But when a sunny day turns into a nightmare, ‘back’ may be Ryou and Darius’s only hope.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Outlands [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/801024
Comments: 337
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

Swords met with that peculiar metallic _ch-ang_ most movies didn't get right. A moment of resistance- then Darius twisted in a way Ryou couldn't follow, and his opponent staggered right past him. If this wasn’t a training match, the Beotian would have gotten a nasty chop across the spine as a follow-through. As it were, all he got was Darius’s bare foot booting him in the backside to send him sprawling.

The Hounds loitering around the training field laughed uproariously, even those still nursing their own bruises. Darius smiled sharply and went to give the fallen man a quick lecture. Ryou went back to studying his scroll for a few seconds before surreptitiously glancing at the scene again. 

It was boiling hot today, the sun raw and fierce even at the halfway mark before noon. Ryou was comfortably ensconced on a stone bench shaded by the arbor branches, a nook open to the breeze wandering through the garden. By contrast, Darius and the Hounds were exercising out in the full sun. The practice tourney featuring only blunt blades or wooden swords, the men had cast off most of their clothes, leaving a lot of skin in evidence. This was not helping Ryou's concentration. He might be in a relationship with one of the people present, that didn't stop him from being gay. After two years of living in the Outlands, Ryou had pretty much gotten used to scars and minor disfigurements, and he was now appreciating, like a true inhabitant of these ancient countries, that he was watching men at the height of their power and virility in the purest tradition of Ionian masculinity. 

"Interesting text?" purred someone right behind him. 

Ryou did not twitch his gaze away and even managed not to jump visibly; the crackle of the scroll twisting a little in his hands was inaudible as Dela the Kush let loose a fearsome war cry in the sandy arena ten meters away while swinging at his own opponent.

"Good morning, Leyam," Ryou said as if he'd heard the King of Assyria creep up on him all along.

"Yes, it is _splen-_ did." Leyam’s tone left no doubt what he was talking about. "I'm so sorry to interrupt your studies, do carry on."

"I will, thank you," said Ryou, now watching Darius. Dust from the arena coated the latter’s skin, beads of sweat licking down his back to the skirt folded multiple times over a belt to provide padding for the only part of Darius that wasn’t openly on display. This was not formalized sparring, this was ‘real stuff’ as the Hounds termed it, and though kicks to the jewels was considered foul play even in these circumstances, stray blows had to be anticipated. If that weren’t the case, Darius would be naked bar the bracer on his wrist and a gold torque on his upper left arm, cut with the half-moon/full-moon symbol of Assyrian royalty. It made for a beautiful contrast, a lovely tableau. 

Leyam chuckled and swept past Ryou to talk to his brother. Ryou hoped the king wouldn't say anything that Ryou would have a hard time living down...

"Sir...what are you reading?" asked Rand in a strange voice. He'd leaned over Ryou's shoulder to glance at the scroll.

"Hmm? Oh, I'm learning Greek. Trying to learn Greek. I wish I could lift the Curse of Babel off the written word as easily as-... what's wrong?"

Rand was rubbing his upper lip in a way that suggested he was hiding a smile. "Who gave you this text?"

"The apprentices to the head scribe, they said it’s a classic-...those little bastards gave me pornography, didn't they," Ryou concluded resignedly, glancing down at the geometrical alphabet painted on the scroll. He'd only gotten as far as deciphering the first paragraph about a man called Sophestes who had a home in Thezali where he liked to drink too much wine. 

"I’m not sure what that word you used just now means," said Rand, eyes creased in rare humour, "but they didn't lie, it is a very well known piece of writing greatly appreciated as a comedy in courts throughout the Pariya. However it's not something I'd advise reading in this heat."

"Little bastards," muttered Ryou without acrimony. The scribe apprentices of the Golden Hall were all under the age of fourteen. The opportunity to tease the renowned, powerful and reputedly wise magian who couldn't read a word of Greek and pitifully little Latin had been too great for those kids to resist. 

The heat was a physical wave undulating through the gardens, but the cicadas who’d been mumbling about the warmth all morning suddenly stopped in concert. The cessation of the familiar background chorus made Ryou glance up. He shaded his eyes with his hand. Darius was smiling at something Leyam had just told him. He glanced over, caught Ryou’s eye and...oh dear, that look suggested something else not advisable to do in this heat. Ryou found himself hoping this stifling weather preceding the flood season would break soon; preferably in the next hour or two when Darius would wrap up his morning's training, wander over and suggest he and Ryou take refuge in his room where he had some cool drinks and fresh pomegranates, the local fruit of temptation...

The heat...was really unpleasant though. Ryou moved his shoulders, then his head against a growing pain in his neck and temples. Was he developing heatstroke...?

Movement caught his eye across the courtyard crushed by sunlight. People were going to and from the palace, Darius's Hounds were rambunctious despite the sun beating down on them, but the motion held Ryou's attention. It was the oddness of it, a jerky uncoordinated plod forward. 

"Rand-" Ryou licked his lips. "Who is that girl? The one coming towards the Hounds?" Her clothes said ‘servant’, but it wasn’t the standard white linen skirt the palace staff were given, and she moved in a way that suggested she was unwell.

Rand looked up from the scroll he'd been reading without any embarrassment, his lips moving over the words. He looked around, puzzled. "I see only men. Was some slave heading towards the kitchens?"

Ryou was already rising to his feet with _I knew it!_ echoing through his head. 

_"Darius!_ Leyam! Get away from- get over here! Now!"

Everyone turned to stare at him in amazement. Everyone but the young woman whose head was bowed so far down she could only be looking at her sandals. She staggered five more steps towards Darius and Leyam as if someone only remotely familiar with the human body were moving her arms and legs. If Rand couldn’t see her, that meant she was not yet fully on this plane. It also made it hard to tell the fighters gathered in front of her which direction to defend from. 

Darius - who'd been through all the weird shit before - tossed down his blunt training sword and reached for the real one propped up near his shield, his armour and the hot pile of fur that was Chamrosh and Azilee. Hot, but awake now and growling, lips fluttering away from fangs and eyes flinching wildly in one direction and then another.

The girl staggered past the first Hound. Her left arm went right through the spear he was holding. The man jumped and looked at his weapon as if he'd felt a nudge. Sand dented beneath the woman’s next step. Nearly materialized.

Rand hurtled past Ryou and the topiaries, a long dagger drawn from somewhere on his person, heading straight towards Leyam. The king was standing next to his brother, looking confused. Nobody else was moving in a constructive way; Ryou swore in Assyrian under his breath and followed Rand at a dead run. 

One of the Hounds started to ask a question and then he hollered in surprise. The girl was now visible three meters away from Darius and Leyam.

The Hounds all fell back in surprise from the slight figure, but not Darius. Three running steps forward raised dust and then sprayed sand as he stopped, braced, swung his sword on the tailend of that movement and with all its strength and inertia plunged the weapon straight into her body.

"No!" shouted Ryou. The girl was already dead, had been for a while now in all but the most basic sense, shoving a piece of metal through her chest wasn’t going to accomplish anything. "The head!" His run was more of a stumble, migraine squeezing his temples and making him dizzy - but even as he rushed forward he knew there wasn’t much point, he wasn’t armed, he’d not had a clue he’d need to _arm_ himself when dressing this morning-

Darius jerked his sword out sideways and brought it back across and up in a whistling arc. The girl jerked, neck hacked into at an angle from left collarbone to right ear, severed all the way through the bone with only flesh still holding her body in one piece. Unbalanced, the corpse fell down on the ground with a dead thud nearly on Ryou’s left foot.

Ryou's fingernails pierced skin as he clenched his fists and gestured down savagely. "NO! Hit her _in_ the head! Quick! Before it's born!"

Darius snarled something - Ryou wouldn't blame him if it was 'give me clearer directions next time!' - and brought the sword down, aiming at the girl's lax face and blind eyes.

The poor woman's skull jumped. Then it moved despite there being virtually no neck left. It was _scurrying._ Darius froze in horror for a second, a second too long. 

The skull cracked, parting at the eye sockets and sinuses, the face shoved aside into a mess of blood and bone and meat. Nestled inside a fold of the revealed brain was a black marble covered in spines. The instant sunlight touched it, it unfurled dozens of legs like a black thistle blooming, squirming to free itself. The front part of the skull, skin, flesh, a thin strip of hair and all, tipped into the dirt and rocked like an empty egg shell, wet and red, the cut that separated it as clean as if it’d been done with a bone saw yet with no indication of how it’d come about. The creature scrambled out of the remnants of grey matter and clawed at dirt.

Darius's sword pinned it to the ground with a very definitive _thunk_. It convulsed like a butterfly dying on a corkboard.

"Inder's _balls,_ what the hell is that?!" Darius spat, face twisted in disgust, hand jerking away from the hilt as if to avoid contamination. All the Hounds had taken several hasty steps back. Leyam was out by the topiary by now where Rand had unceremoniously dragged him. 

"Get away!" Ryou shouted, yanking at his lover’s arm. He was shivering, his stomach twisting so badly he was going to throw up his breakfast. "Darius come on! We need to run!"

"Huh? But it's dead." Darius grabbed the sword anyway, shaking the thing off the tip like a cockroach. 

"No! Yes it's dead but _the other one followed it!"_ Get away getawaygetawayget-

"Other one? What other-"

Almost right over their heads, the air ripped apart.

"Ashur protect us," someone choked out. 

It had no face. There was no up or down, back or front to the creature, a featureless black sphere the size of a large beach ball about ten meters off the ground. The skin was wrinkled and ridged, hanging loose on the creature and dangling ponderously at an obscene angle that had nothing to do with gravity. Limbs sprouted from all over the sphere like the spines of a sea urchin but in total asymmetry, grouped together here, leaving the twitching wrinkled skin bare there; each limb was as long as three or four men, thin, hard, segmented like roach legs with a seemingly random number of joints bending them in all directions until they tapered to a spiny claw. They splayed out in all directions yet each one seemed to be bracing against something, even those hovering in mid-air, carrying the creature over their heads at a height that rivaled the nearby palace wing’s three stories.

Then the appendages jerked in unison like spider legs and it skittered closer through the air; some of the legs plunged straight down and sunk into the ground, or rather, through the ground, _ignoring_ the ground as they braced against something else in another dimension entirely. Sections of the creature faded in and out of view seemingly at random, it could almost be a mirage. But it wasn’t. Those spiny protuberances that didn’t sink into the ground scored it with a sandy Sccrrsh and skitter, and there was a smell- a smell like formic acid that made the eyes prickle. 

Three flailing limbs jabbed forward, crashed into a tow-headed Hound and sent him thudding to the ground. All too real. Ryou’s heart was in his mouth; he hoped with all his might that the man hurled down hadn’t been his friend Jexen, he couldn’t see through all the people milling around. Some of the Hounds stood paralyzed with fright, but most of them had too strong a sense of duty to let fear rob them of their discipline; they'd grabbed real weapons from nearby racks, stuffed helms on their heads and ringed the creature. 

With a shout, Dionysodoros lunged forward and hurled a javelin. The strike, though shaky, would have hit the bulbous mass at the center… but the weapon winked out of existence before it could get near. Dio fell back, face ashen and expression hopeless. Then he had to duck as the creature's appendages came crashing down on his position. Other men shouted and fell back. Claws bit into the ground, scoring deep grooves. A dark-skinned Hound stood his ground, hammered two-handed down on a spiny leg with his practice sword like a club- it went right through the limb which was as suddenly as immaterial as a hologram, the tip lodging unimpeded into the arena’s sand. 

A near-naked Esonian named Samachus nearly bowled Ryou over. Ryou slipped by the man, trying to reach Darius who had moved to the forefront, of course. 

A shadow flashed overhead. Ryou blinked- 

Something like a bundle of black bamboo sticks smashed right in front of him, not even a foot away.

Ryou changed course and backed off hurriedly. No need to get caught in the crossfire or get in the way, and he didn’t need to be close to be effective. This creature might be a nightmare come to life, but it was not unfamiliar for all that. He’d touched it before with the barest tip of his mental fingers, the day after the siege of Essin. It was a dimensional predator, so simply hurling spears at it would probably not be effective. Above all, it was a mathematical puzzle. It was here, yet not. To stay in this position despite the riptides of reality dragging at it, it must have a lot of control. But after two years of practice, teachings and battles, so did Ryou.

Most of his focus on the creature, Ryou stumbled blindly through the ranks of men jostling forward to attack or back away from this enemy they could not fight. He stopped at the first Hound he found who still had a javelin. It was Hamado. Good. The Aksumite was a rock, nothing ever got to him or ruffled his cold calculating battle discipline; which was why he hadn’t bothered to hurl his javelin after seeing the fate of Dio's cast.

"Throw that when I tell you to," Ryou told him shortly.

Hamado glanced briefly away from the waving, gnashing chitin to look at Ryou's face. Then without a question he drew back his arm, weapon poised. Ryou put his hand on Hamado's naked shoulder, the black skin hot beneath his fingers and wiry muscles coiling like deadly springs. Ryou’s breath was loud in his ears as he closed his eyes - still seeing the creature like a glaring grey-green sore in his mind's landscape.

"Do it.”

Hamado's shoulder jerked beneath Ryou's palm. The javelin went flying. Ryou's mind leapt ahead of its path, its faint pull-tug of gravity - javelin to earth and back again - rippling the integrity of space and n-space no more than a molecule’s worth. Riding the crest of that ripple with his mind’s eye, he tackled the air around the creature where its abilities had created segments of space that belonged to somewhere else, another plane where a few other javelins now lay forlorn and useless. Ryou pierced the rift to weave a small Path from here, through those protective shells of different planes, and into the space where the creature’s brain center truly lurked.

The javelin impacted with a meaty thud, impaling skin and flesh, burying deep in what looked like the throbbing nerve ganglia of the creature’s body. 

It made no sound, but the multiple legs exploded into jerky motion. They slammed into the ground, they squeezed up like fingers forming fists, they thrashed around whipping up dust. Overall the motion moved the ball up and away. A twist dislodged the javelin; the weapon tumbled a meter through the air and then vanished. The creature wiggled and convulsed - were there fewer limbs than before? Yes- yes- there were only a dozen visible now, the ones that seemed braced against nothing.

Most of the soldiers were down on the ground or had fallen back. Hamado dodged and disappeared beneath Ryou's hand. Ryou kept his arm up, his fingers extended. He heard Hamado double back to grab him, but Ryou shook off the grip on his arm. He reached out-

\- took space around the creature and _twisted._

It resisted him, but only for a couple of seconds. The spawn that it had come to protect was dead, it was injured itself, maybe dying, it did not have the taste for a further fight. It slipped away and Ryou folded space behind it, sealing it shut.

He had the odd impression some noise above the threshold of his hearing had abruptly stopped, leaving his ears ringing. The sounds of groans from the wounded and alarmed shouting in the distance sounded insanely prosaic by contrast. Ryou moved his jaw, popped his ears and shook his head. 

"It's gone," he muttered, not sure who he was talking to. He hoped to god he didn't have to go through that again any time soon; it was harder than it should be for a purely mental exercise, and he didn’t like the way it made him feel afterwards, dizzy and disconnected as if he was passenger in his own skull, sitting behind his own eye sockets and looking out at what was only one possible shade of reality among others. 

There were men on the ground. Ryou could not remember seeing that many get injured. There was blood too, dark ropes of it spattered here and there in the sand. He hoped nobody was seriously injured; he knew most of the Hounds by now, many of them were friends. He watched Dio, arm gashed and bleeding, stagger past with wide eyes fixed on one of the soldiers lying on the ground, a soldier who looked like- 

No. Oh no.

Ryou's croak came at the same split second as Leyam's anxious shout. 

"Darius!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-ta-taaaaaa…. Okay, you probably know where this is going, right?  
> Next chapter out in a week since it just needs a polish, the one after that as well, after that the posting rhythm will be irregular as I have to finish some massive writing to end it. But this fic won’t die unless real life punches me in the kidneys, and I don’t foresee more than a 2-3 week delay max between the last chapters as is.


	2. Chapter 2

Ryou stared blindly out the window without shielding his aching eyes from the mid-afternoon sunshine. Life in the palace went on; water trickled merrily in the fountains, peacocks strutted through the garden grass, a lamb bleated near the kitchen where the palace mealtime preparations were about to begin. Each small familiar vignettes, this litany of hours, deepened Ryou’s sense of foreboding. If the morning had given no indication of what the afternoon would bring, then Ryou might currently be standing here with some shards of hope still clutched in his fists, not knowing that by this time tomorrow he'd be looking out at a sunny day of gardens and peacocks, and Darius would be dead.

He tried to shove the thought away. The priestesses of Hygiea had not given up yet. Then again, neither had they offered much hope. In fact they'd said very little, which was unusual and left Ryou and Leyam in ignorant suspense, not a very pleasant place to be. Maybe they weren't saying anything because they knew it was hopeless but were worried about the fallout from Leyam if they didn't appear to do as much as they could. Maybe Ryou should be thankful for these few hours of hope he had left. 

Ryou reminded himself yet again to stop grinding his teeth; it made his jaw ache and it wasn't helping.

Leaning out of the window of the room so familiar it might as well be his own, Ryou craned his neck to see the Women’s Gate. Citizens had been gathering outside the walls for hours now as the news trickled down the slopes of Sura in time with the waters of the aqueduct. He could hear chanting; it'd be coming from every temple. Ryou, cynicism in an unforgiving mood, wondered how many of those priests actually gave a damn about the blunt warrior prince they were praying for, and how many were just hoping to later claim their divine intercession had assisted his recovery in order to claim a part of what would undoubtedly be a generous reward from Leyam. 

The chanting, the praying, the slaves creeping by, the abnormally quiet guards patrolling the gardens, glancing briefly at the window as they passed; all orbited the room’s bed along with Ryou’s thoughts. 

Darius had been unconscious when his men picked him up to carry him to his room on a shield. Transferring him to the bed had jerked him back to consciousness with a yell of pain, but he’d not been very coherent before slipping into a half-aware state of suffering. He only came fully to his senses when the priestesses, hastily summoned, had cleaned the blood and sand from his body to examine his injuries, but he didn’t seem to grasp the fact that he was wounded and out of the fight; blind and deaf to all their pleas, he’d squirmed and resisted the hands holding him down while ordering Rand to get Leyam out of the yard and Jexen- Jexen and Dio had to fall back - fall back and protect Ryou. Then he shouted at Parexes, a Hound who’d been dead over a year now, to rally the phalanx and bring him his horse, the enemy was coming. He’d choked before he could give more orders and started to shake as if he was freezing. 

The Holy One had given him a draught and he was sleeping it off at this point. Sweat pearled his forehead, his chest, running down skin that'd taken on an odd waxen quality. The thin coverlet of simple cotton the Holy One had brought, marking it with symbols, was pulled up over his waist, hiding the mess. In the confusion of the battle, nobody had seen exactly what had happened, but it was probably the final panicked flailing of the beast that had sent one of its appendages spearing through him, before shaking him off and hurling him to the ground. The contusion on the left side of his head explained his confused state; just as serious was the way he’d been impaled low on the abdomen, halfway across and down between the belly button and the right hipbone, a deep ragged puncture half a finger’s width angling down to an exit wound at the bottom of his back. Dela and Dio held him down while the priestess had poured remedies into the wounds. Darius had been out of it but his body had bucked and fought the pain like a dying animal thrashing. Ryou had not wanted to watch, nor the application of silk stitches over the injuries, curved bone needle tenting and then poking through his lover’s flesh - but he'd been there anyway, watching the Holy One like a hawk to make sure she washed her hands and didn't wipe her nose during the operation (she'd tried to make subtle hints about Ryou's behaviour to Leyam, but the King had become remarkably obtuse all of a sudden and had deflected any cues with a 'whatever do you mean?' and 'Why, is there any reason why my brother's best friend should not watch what you're doing to him?')

On the other side of the window's aperture, Dio and Jexen talked in low voices, swapping stories of great warriors who'd survived 'fearsome wounds' before and lived to tally four dozen years, six dozen even. But Ryou knew that for every one man who made it into legend after this kind of injury, a hundred more died within days without much anyone could do about it…He'd clung to hope to start with, because the impalement injury looked relatively small, clean as these things went, and not near any vital organs Ryou was aware of. But then Darius's face had gotten paler and paler, his skin grew hot to the touch, and the three devotees of Hygiea stopped grinding herbs into poultices and started praying instead. 

Ryou didn't need the look on Leyam's face to tell him that this was not a good sign.

A flicker on the higher planes caught his attention. He glanced down at the yard, tense...but it was just Andrap, starting another patrol around the palace. Fat lot that was going to do now. If the Ancients had been able to conjure more than one of those creatures, then that’s what the Hounds would have been facing this morning. No, the enemy had done their worse and were now conspicuous by their absence. 

They might not even be involved at all. Ryou knew a little about the creature from his studies and Andrap had filled in some more gaps. Hvana-Uzayin, they were called in Avestan, which loosely translated to ‘dream hunters’. These higher dimensional predators were semi-intelligent but not tameable in the least; if the adult this morning had in fact been used as a weapon, it’d been unwittingly. These hideous creatures spawned into host bodies from whatever plane they inhabited, stalking their prey by following the ripples caused by human minds in the fluid malleable semi-reality that composed the Outlands. If the hunt was successful and the intended victim stopped moving for a few hours - for instance, if they were asleep - then the Uzayin struck, passing its ovipositor directly into the cerebrum by phasing in via the higher planes with barely a twinge of pain. Most victims never even woke up during the process. Growing from the size of a grain of wheat, the spawn slowly invaded the host’s white matter with their appendages, soft and hair-thin to begin with, killing the human from the inside by inches and all the while hidden and invisible bar increasingly serious migraines. Spears of limbs wormed into the prefrontal cortex, the temporal lobe, slowly lobotomizing its prey, eventually inducing stupor and dementia while keeping essential life support active for as long as possible. It would even invade the motor cortex in order to move the host’s limbs to a certain extent. Not a lot or very accurately, but enough to get it out of danger, away from fire for example, during that last week or so of gestation in which both host and parasite were otherwise helpless, assuming the victim’s unwitting family were not taking care of them. When they neared birth, the spawn emitted some form of communication through the dimensions to call the adult to their location for protection and to collect them into the higher planes. This was not usually as spectacular a process as this morning’s skull-bursting exploit; Darius killing its host must have caused the spawn to break out of its nesting place in a panic. Normally the birth was invisible to the human eye; the adult simply removed the spawn the same way it had entered, via a slip into the higher dimensions, leaving the host behind seemingly intact on the outside but with an invisible and unexplainable hole in their brain the size of a golf ball, to die quickly of shock, stroke or blood loss. All of this was nightmare-inducing but perfectly natural; what wasn’t business as usual was the way the host had staggered through the planes into the courtyard this morning. The baby lifeform did have embryonic dimension-splitting abilities, the way a chick had a spike on the beak and the instincts to use it to break out of its shell. It was how it had neatly split the victim’s skull in two as with a bonesaw. But those rudimentary and immature skills weren’t meant for an epic walk across realities, so how had the poor victim’s body gotten to that particular courtyard in Assyria just in time for the birth? Some danger might have induced it to flee, sure, this could happen, but it probably hadn’t happened by accident this morning. Andrap was unable to hazard even a guess as to how the Ancients - or anyone - could have orchestrated it, however. Either way, the damage was done, any hypothetical perpetrators were far away by now, Andrap was doing his useless circles around the palace and Ryou was left with the fallout. 

Seresa Bher Atoli, the current Holy One of Hygeia in Sura, turned away from the foot of Darius's bed and faced Leyam. Ryou was at their side in an instant.

"The night and the next day will tell us the Prince's fate," she intoned. She was a tall woman with a remarkably deep voice, level and clear as a deep-toned bell. Very good Priestess material thought Ryou bitingly, because that was better than to dwell on the fact that she'd just told them Darius was likely to be dead by tomorrow. 

Leyam stood arms crossed and without saying anything. He was dressed as he was this morning, a silvery-white androgynous robe tucked with gold-bordered red scarves here and there, but his wig had been tossed over a nearby chair, someone had collected his bangles and earrings. His sandy hair, thinning a little on the sides, was caught back in a severe tie and he’d wiped away the face paint. There was not a hint of the gaudy Bitch King about him now. Even the Holy One, who'd struck Ryou as being extremely conscious of her status as representative of a higher power, looked a little smaller and less impressive in the face of Leyam's stony silence.

"We have eased his pain. Now he sleeps," Sesera continued, glancing back at Darius, perhaps because looking at Leyam was making her uncomfortable (Ryou doubted he was even on her radar). "His wounds are cleansed and bound, and he has taken the nostrums that will invigorate the flesh. But the devas of Namtar are assaulting his spirit. His life burns like a candle."

He's got an infection because he was speared through the gut, Ryou internally railed. Today was not a good day for the Outland's blind superstition. 

Leyam was still silent and this was now affecting even the Holy One's serenity; she licked her lips and didn't quite meet the King's eye. There was some uncertainty here.... Maybe these priestesses were finally confronted with how little they knew of the mechanics of the illnesses they were supposed to cure. The servants of the mighty and merciful Hygiea could accomplish some unexplainable feats, wounds staying clean and healing faster than normal from some intervention that no Inlander could fathom. But at the end of the day, these superstitious ignoramuses thought every undistinguishable plague was divine punishment and hadn't even figured out the symptomatology of various diseases or their vectors of transmission. And Darius's life depended on them…

"We will cleanse and anoint him," Sesera said, still not looking at Leyam. "We will keep his body in repose, that he might wield his full strength against the foe attacking him. And we will pray. The Blessed goddess will be the one to demand of the Fates that his life not be cut short."

They'd do their best to keep Darius's fever down and his wound clean from the outside, Ryou interpreted, and after that it was up to divine intervention or, as an atheist would call it, dumb luck.

“Can we go kill a bird?” came a very small question from the other side of Darius’s bed. 

Dardan’s nurse shushed him sharply. The four year old, cowed, looked back down at the floor.

Ryou stared at him dully. Nine months ago, the boy with copper skin, hazel eyes and wavy brown hair had been brought to the palace from the region of Nairoban to meet a prince and general who was his father. That’d been a new experience all around… Darius took it somewhat in stride, though he spent only a little time with the child, mainly checking in on his tutors from time to time and imposing discipline via a heavy slap on the rear the few times it was required. He’d pay more attention when Dardan turned eight, at which point his son would get the full benefit of his training and martial expertise. Despite being well aware that this probably made him the ‘mom’ in all this, or more accurately the stepmom, Ryou always felt the need to meddle a little more in Dardan’s life, sitting with him in the garden to talk about what he was learning, going over the Greek alphabet together, teaching him rudimentary maths and ensuring the kitchens sent him decent food that didn’t accidentally poison him. Ryou should be on that side of the bed right now. Dardan’s relation with his father was-... Ryou couldn't quite imagine what the young child felt about the prince who’d picked him out of obscurity and brought him to the political center of his entire known world to become his son and heir. At best he seemed in awe of Darius, at worst, a little overwhelmed and timid (Ryou himself didn’t seem to get more than semi-filial compliance and the occasional grin, but that was already more than he’d ever expected in this life and was thus one hundred percent profit on the margin as far as he was concerned.) It was maybe too soon for true affection to have developed there, but filial bonds were extremely strong in the Pariya and nurtured from birth. Dardan was visibly upset, and his suggestion to go sacrifice some doves, as he’d seen others do before, had been shot down without explanation leaving him even more adrift and intimidated. Ryou should really go over there and- and talk to him, reassure the little boy, but what was he going to say? That everything was going to be alright? That’d be a lie. The reason Dardan was standing here was in case Darius died, and then those little hands, so timid and child-like, were going to have to hold the fingers of his father clasped together while the priests bound his wrists with ribbons of purple silk-

No.

Ryou was at Darius's side. He'd walked away in the middle of the Holy One's explanations. 

Darius's hand was hot and humid. He already had a fever. 

A small part of Ryou wanted to hide from this, he wanted to cling to that hand and pray too. But that wasn't him. He reached out, drew down the sheet and moved aside a poultice despite the muttered protest from one of the praying Hygieans. The wound, previously a hole as jagged as a scream, was now cleaned and stitched. The edges of the injury were puffy and distended, fluids had seeped pink and red into the cheesecloth of the poultice, but overall it looked a lot better than before. However they did it, the Hygieans of the inner circle and the Holy One above all could be trusted to keep an open injury reasonably clean, stitch it up, and keep a mild fever down. But this was beyond them. Darius did not have sickness demons attacking him under the orders of the dreaded Namtar, god of plagues and hunger; he was suffering from shock, concussion and the beginnings of septicaemia. 

Darius made a faint sound, like half a word falling into silence. Ryou looked up at his lover's face, but Darius was still unconscious. He had a bruise forming just above the hairline, turning angry red and swelling to the point it was visible under a second poultice of mint and gentian steeped in palm wine. His breathing was heavy with a faint rasp to it. This was not good…Ryou shook himself. He'd been off inside the confines of his own head, weighing options against his abilities, and coming to a decision. When he looked around, Leyam was sitting in a chair pulled up near Darius's head, one arm planted on the rest, hand covering his mouth, the skin white under the pressure as he watched his brother's life slip away. Rand was standing behind him, unreadable gaze fixed on an empty spot halfway between Darius and the king, resignation and helplessness in the unusual slump of his shoulders. Dardan was half asleep on the lap of his nurse who’d sat crossed-legged on the floor and flipped up her simple beige mantle to cover her head like a deep hood as if that could physically shut her out of the room without actually leaving. Everybody else had been unceremoniously shooed out, and the Holy One was now standing right next to Ryou, giving him a Look. 

Ryou looked back. 

A few seconds passed. 

Ryou did not have Leyam's presence, nor did he have the royal authority to order soldiers to attack a temple and burn it to the ground. Not that Leyam would do that, not for Darius, not for anyone. Leyam was an absolute monarch, but he was an inhabitant of the Outlands and he had to live with its people and its gods. He knew the rules.

As most people in the upper crust of Sura now knew, though, Ryou was one of those mysterious Inlanders and a magian of vast powers. This tidbit of information was sitting in the throne of the Holy One’s wisdom, as they said in Assyria; in other words, it was currently weighing on her mind to no small degree. She could guess which way King Leyam would jump, or at the least what his limits were. She knew absolutely nothing of what Ryou was capable of. If she'd intended to toss him out of the room as she'd done with Dio, Jexen, Darius's attendants and the dogs, she was obviously changing her mind. She didn't look at him as she replaced the poultice over the wound, neither did she mention the sheet Ryou still gripped in his free hand.

Ryou spoke over his shoulder. "Leyam. I need a fast horse. And I'll need another one- no, make that a few men with another horse waiting for me when I get back."

"Get back from where?" Rand asked, confounded. Leyam was silent. He'd lifted his face from his hand and was watching Ryou with an unreadable expression. 

"My country. I'm going to bring back a doctor from my country."

Rand stared at Ryou, then glanced down at Leyam, looking for directions. 

"Do you think it will help?" he finally asked when his king said nothing. 

"At this point it can't hurt," said Ryou, and if Hygiea took offense, screw Her. Divine intervention might resolve this, but antibiotics and surgery to repair the damage was far less aleatory. As long as it wasn't too late…

"I don't have a minute to lose. It'll take me several hours to get there and back as it is. Leyam?"

Leyam put his hand together, elbows anchored on the ivory chair’s arm rests. His eyes above the gripped fingers were hard, his words blunt. "If you think there is hope, that is well and good. But in the hours that you will be gone, my brother may die. If he wakes before the end, he will want you to be here. That is all I have to say. The decision is yours."

Ryou looked down at Darius. That death mask on his face was just so wrong when Ryou remembered the fire that usually burned there; the laughs and the scowls and the angry growls, the soft words and the oath they'd sworn and the bonds they'd made. 

"I’m not staying here just for that eventuality. I refuse to. If he wakes up and asks for me…remind him what we promised each other. Tell him I'm fighting for him like we said we would."

Leyam scrutinized him, judging his determination, then he nodded sharply. "Go then, with godspeed. Rand."

"Yes my King." Rand’s voice was intense and sure once more, devoid of that uncertainty that'd been so unlike him. Five long strides brought him to the door. "Dio, Jexen! Get the guard on horseback now!"

Ryou gripped Darius's hand, leaning close enough to feel the heat radiating from the flushed cheek. "I'll be back,” he said softly, though he knew his promise couldn’t be heard. “You just remember you're an obstreperous cur who won't let monsters, injuries or even the gods boss you around. You remember that and hang on until I get back."

A short private corridor separated his room from Darius’s. Ryou swept aside the tapestry, strode to his dresser and sent scrolls, pens, wax and styluses flying as he dug out his wallet. He ripped off his sandals and long tunic, pulled on the first appropriate clothes he could find - mismatching as all hell a red silk top with dark green Beotian trousers - didn’t bother knotting the cord belt. He stuffed his feet into sneakers and grabbed the thick jacket he’d bought a year ago when he and Darius had been to Japan, covering the bracer on his forearm. He ruffled Dardan’s hair with a reassuring smile as he passed, waved briefly at Leyam on his way out and took the stairs down three at a time. Servants and slaves leapt out of his way. Many of them were in tears, and not the fake sobs of the professional mourners either. With his obscure parentage, his days in the kennel, his straightforward nature and harsh-but-fair treatment of everyone from slaves to generals, Darius was well liked in Sura, or at least a respected mainstay. People in the Outlands did not like sudden changes in their familiar landscape, not when the new and the strange could kill them in a variety of ways. Though if Darius died, they'd go on living fine without him and by this time next year he'd only be a memory, remembered with fondness and amusement for some of his crazier antics, fast going into legend. But if Ryou had anything to say in the matter, the real one would still be striding around, being rude to the courtiers and bringing his dogs along with him to dirty up the floors.

The courtyard outside the stables was in chaos. The Hounds had been caring for injured comrades and waiting in a state of shock to hear if their prince would live or die; suddenly they were stirred to action. Rand was a beacon in the middle of the maelstrom, one large fist gripping his stallion's bridle as he stood beside the horse and directed the men. Kunuboi the Thezalian was leading Aangad out of the stables. The war horse gifted to Ryou by Darius was a magnificent animal, calm but not placid, fast without being out of control. He was not quite the horse Ryou needed right this minute, though. For starters, he needed one that was already tacked up. 

"Yes, get the- huh?" The look on Jexen's face was comical when Ryou ran up to him, jerked the reins out of his hand and swung up onto the saddled mare. 

"Er, sir? What-"

"Ryou, wait!" barked Rand.

Ryou whipped the horse’s shoulder with the reins. It snorted and leapt forward, hitting the ground at a run. Ryou pulled it towards the Women's Gate, the closest and still open at this time of day. The gathered inhabitants of Sura saw him coming and fortunately leapt out of the way. Ryou thundered through the streets. He turned right at the Tinmaker's Quarters to avoid the market and its impassable ways. The horse slowed a little in the narrow, steep street that marked Clothmakers Row. A passel of women sat under the awnings of several of the shops weaving dark red bunting; mourning cloth in Darius's colours in case it was needed. Assyrians saw death as a pragmatic certainty, Ryou was almost used to the attitude by now. He pushed the horse on harder.

The Ox Gate road would be faster than taking a boat if he didn't mind half killing his horse which, unfortunately, was unavoidable. Ryou thundered along the wide paved road, past cracked and stubbled fields begging for the floods, angling around the occasional cart or donkey train or elderly lady with a huge bundle of produce on her bent back. Ryou rode with unthinking ease, he’d been on a horse almost every day in the past year for one reason or another, as often as in another life - still sharp in his mind yet as distinct as if locked behind panes of glass - as often as in another life he’d driven a car. He’d ridden for pleasure and he’d ridden to war, he’d been on a horse for days on end or just for short gallops around the city-hill of Sura. He’d taken this particular road many times, racing Darius to the gate past spring-green fields of barley, Aangad and Barezahi striving forward side by side with proud angry snorts while the two lovers laughed and encouraged them-

Evening was falling when he reached Mooncrest. The inn’s patio lay deserted, the passer and his customers would be indoors eating an early supper before bedding with the chickens to be ready for a pre-dawn crossing. Ignoring the dimensional currents tugging him, Ryou directed the horse to clop over the beaten sod while giving the sanctuary a wide berth. Bent as he was on breaking every rule in Zaratusra’s book, Ryou did not want the interference of the Per Gathas at this point. 

The stone bridge over the Taibor tributary loomed ahead. The mare, covered in sweat and panting like bellows, flicked its ears and rolled its eyes at the feel of flux around him, but it was a warhorse who'd walked the Path before. It stayed still. Ryou took a deep breath, mind feeling through this patch of fragile reality for the way he wanted to take. He was going to mess up the Mooncrest Paths more than a bit with this stunt he had planned, but he'd apologize to the Passer and to Haaskoning later, assuming he was going to be able to do this and not shoot himself out of the world altogether. Visit the realm of the Ancients Gods again, for example. Wouldn't that be fun.

...It wasn’t that risk or any other that popped into his mind at that point, though. All he could see, like a brilliant jewel of many facets, was that image of Darius the first time Ryou had laid eyes on him. When the second Rajin had come through, and Darius, injured but still fighting, had walked forward to confront it. The smile on his face had haunted Ryou back then, possessed him; dragged him out of his safe life and into the Outlands. He'd wanted to smile like that one day, like someone free of constraints and with nothing to lose.

Now that he was acquainted with the man intimately, Ryou knew better. That hadn't been a ‘nothing to lose’ expression; it’d been the smile of one who had everything to lose, but only one route open and no regrets that would stop him from fighting on to the end and dying well. Ryou knew this because he had the same smile on his face right now.

With a harsh “Yah!” he sent the mare galloping towards the bridge. Ryou's mind stretched out, fracturing reality, running roughshod over the easy ways of getting to the next plane to, instead, hammer out a Path that would take him all the way back to the edge of the Great Veil and beyond, back to the Inlands. 

Only one way forward now across that bridge. Smiling grimly, fiercely, Ryou took it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the comments! I'm so glad people are enjoying these outings into the Outlands, it really does help my inspiration. Next chapter out in a week, in which Ryou can expect to do a lot of negotiating. Also some pleading.


	3. Chapter 3

Jexen's horse screamed as it clattered over the uneven surface of a sidewalk curb. Ryou slid bonelessly out of the saddle, staggered away from the crash of hooves on concrete, fell to his knees and threw up. 

The throbbing pulses of pain through his body lasted long enough for the horse to quieten and wicker piteously to itself. Ryou wiped his mouth and looked around. 

He was where he and Darius had ended up on their last trip here a year ago, as he'd planned. Ryou was immensely gratified at the result despite the draining migraine that accompanied it, because landing anywhere in Japan was already a fortunate event in itself after that journey. To actually make his target was a bloody miracle. From the quality of the wet chilly air, it was shortly after dawn. Good, in this commercial sprawl, there would hopefully be nobody around to wake up, look out the window and wonder why a horse was wandering around the backlot of a manga store. 

The horse snorted and shied away from the crazy man stinking of vomit. Ryou managed to catch the reins and shush it, then he tied it to the hinge of a dumpster. The storekeeper would find it soon and call the police, and then it would go to a good home or...something. Ryou couldn't find it in him to worry about a horse. Jexen's side saddle turned up a scarf which he used to clean himself, then he headed down the street with a deliberate step, looking for the busier thoroughfare he’d visited last year.

A taxi driver obligingly steered through the thin traffic towards Ryou’s hand signal, but looked a little askance at his potential fare’s appearance even as he slowed the car. Ryou opened his wallet and picked out the tidy bundle of yen left over from that pawnbroker a year ago. The driver focused on that rather than on Ryou's odd clothes, zipped up jacket, pallor and redolent smell of sickness, and even opened the door for him.

Fifty minutes later - traffic was getting dense - Ryou was in front of an apartment low-rise in Nanpeidai. Not that he had any proof his brother still lived here, but he had to start somewhere. If Yuki had moved, Ryou would have to do something he did not want to do, and call his mother. 

A young girl with a backpack and a field hockey stick burst out of the front door, eyes on the road up ahead, probably running for an early bus; she absently held open the door for him to enter. There was no concierge, the security here was all electronic. Little camera eyes followed Ryou who forced himself to walk confidently towards the stairwell and the first floor apartments. At the end of the hallway he leaned against the doorjamb and took a deep breath. Every minute counted, but his head was spinning from all that had happened today, the attack, the trip, the rapid succession of events. He could barely believe he was back in Tokyo, just like that, and he really couldn't believe what he was about to ask his brother to do…

Ryou rang the doorbell once. A second time. A third, his heart squeezing tighter and tighter as he measured just how much time he was going to lose if Yuki wasn't here. Then some sound of movement from inside made him tense. 

"Coming," came a reassuringly familiar voice. The door opened a crack. "Yes? Who- Ryou?!"

"Yuki, I need your help."

His brother, tow-headed and rumpled in grey pyjamas, stared at him open mouthed, then he said. "Oh! _Oh!_ You need-" he caught himself and looked around with the restraint of a long-time apartment dweller who did not create scandals in the hallway. "Come in," he said frostily, holding the door open wider.

Ryou walked in, glancing around the apartment which hadn't changed that much outside of a new couch, a bigger television and a ready-to-go bulky tennis bag overwhelming the tiny kitchen counter. The first-floor bachelor apartment was a prize considering the closeness of a station, the hospital, and the overall neatness and status of the sector. It was also rented at a much lower cost than one would expect because the owner - well actually the owner was a corporation, but the owner of that corporation was a friend of the President, so… Yuki had benefited from this generous chain of connections with bad grace, same as usual, but Ryou was ready to bet he was glad to have had this during the lean years of his internship, when many of his peers had made do with basement dwellings an hour’s commute away, putting up with a couple of roommates to boot. By comparison, this was luxury. It seemed much smaller than it used to…

Facing him, Yuki drew himself to his full height, an effect ruined by the comparison to the kind of men Ryou had associated with these past two years. The pyjamas didn’t help. "So, you came back. After that scene with mother and father-"

"Yuki, I'm sorry, you'll have plenty of time to yell at me later, but right now I really need your help."

"Oh yes, that's right. What do you need? Money?" Yuki’s raking glance at Ryou's clothes became a fixed gaze as his eyes traveled up and down. "Damn it, Ryou, what have you been up to? I- you barely look like yourself anymore. What kind of clothes-"

"You heard from our parents about my visit last year, right? About the man I was with?"

"Yeah..." Yuki rallied visibly. "Yes, I did. Mother assured me you did not seem to be laboring under the effects of a nervous breakdown, but as a medical man that's the only way I can explain how someone as rational as yourself could commit such a massive error in judgement. Father has-"

"He's been injured. It's serious. I need you to come help him."

Yuki made a strangled noise.

"I can’t tell you much. There's a reason for this secrecy. I-"

"I can’t _believe_ it! Father was right! That man is a criminal, a- what the hell have you gotten yourself into?! Do you know father hired several private investigators to find you?"

"He did?" Ryou shook his head to clear the wash of surprise and feelings that came with it. "He probably just wants to find out how low I've fallen. I'm afraid his P.I.s have absolutely no chance of finding me, and if they did, father would be rather disappointed to see that I am doing very well."

"You don't look like it," said Yuki sharply.

"I've just had a very bad day," Ryou countered, trying to stop his teeth from clenching. The memory of a lot of sibling sniping matches were coming back to him... "Yuki, for reasons I cannot explain, I can’t take Darius to a hospital or to any other doctor. Can you please come and help him?"

"Well that's easy to answer! No! Are you out of your mind?! It's illegal to practice that kind of back-alley medicine! How can you even ask me that?!"

Ryou took a deep breath. This was going to be about as easy as ripping dimensions apart. "Yuki-"

"No! You just expect me to- to- You show up and _I_ have to help- risk everything to help _you?!_ Why does everything always have to be about you?! Father’s golden boy- ugh! Go to him! He’ll fix everything for you since you’re the only one who’s ever been good enough for- what the hell are you doing?!"

Ryou thought that the answer - kneeling in supplication - was self-evident. 

"Yuki, please. I'm begging you."

"You-..." His brother sounded horrified. Seeing his stiff-necked, rational big brother kneeling for the sake of a male lover had to be turning his universe upside down. 

_"Please.”_

"But...no, Ryou, get up for the love of- that's not going to change my mind." Though he sounded a good deal less angry. Now he sounded mortified and appalled, which wasn't necessarily better. 

The carpet felt odd beneath Ryou's fingers, synthetic fibres far removed from the fine rugs of Sura's palaces. But he'd get used to it, Ryou thought grimly. If he was going to have to kneel here for an hour to get Yuki to help, that's what he'd do. 

"Consider. Things could have gone very differently, and Darius could be the one kneeling here begging you for my life. Would you come then?"

Yuki made the strangled noise again. "Look," he growled after clearing his throat, "this is just insane. Oh bloody hell, Ryou, get up!"

Ryou did not get up, but he did straighten, putting his hands on his knees and looking up at his brother. "I can barely imagine what you must think of my visit last year, but Darius is as important to me as my life. Think of it as me, dying out there."

"Why me?" Yuki asked with an angry chest-thump, though he sounded pitifully confused behind the whining. "Why can't you just call emergency services and-"

"Because I need someone I can trust absolutely, and who will be discreet," said Ryou, and then he called upon the spirit of Leyam to assist him. Bamboozle them with the biggest lies, the best being the one with a kernel of truth deep inside. "Look, I did not have the authorization last time to tell our parents what I was doing and where I was going, but the truth is, for the past two years I've been working with the authorities at the highest level, serving my country and the people who live there. That's all I can say about that. But I swear on my life, Yuki, that I am not asking you to break the law, and you will not get into any trouble over this. You'll have to take a few days leave from hospital, but maybe you can tell them it’s a family emergency."

"It _is_ a family emergency, my older brother has gone insane," Yuki muttered, looking out the window at the block of apartments on the other side of the small plaza. "As it happens it’s my day off, or you'd not even have found me here- er…"

A throb of hope twisted Ryou's heart.

Yuki scowled as if he realized that had almost been a concession. "This is nuts. You expect me to waltz into- into some hideout somewhere-"

"It's a well-maintained room with nurses," Ryou put in, trying to detach his brother from this illegality concept. "We just need a doctor, medicine and surgical instruments."

"Surgical- what the hell is wrong with him? You didn't say."

Ryou pointed at his lower abdomen above the hip. "He was stabbed here."

"Sta-... Oh my god, what the hell have you gotten yourself involved in?"

"Something too complicated to explain right now." Time was trickling away like blood seeping from a cut. "But if you come with me, after you take care of Darius, we can talk all you want. You’ll be there a couple of days, I’ll have ample time. I swear I'll explain everything."

Yuki muttered something obscene, but it was obvious that he now really, really wanted to know what the hell was going on. 

"Days...? You mean you want me to be- wherever we're going for days? I have time accrued, but…" Yuki looked blindly around at his apartment for a minute, then he cast a furious glare at the kneeling Ryou and crossed his arms. "You have no idea the kind of trouble this is going to get me into."

"Thank you," said Ryou, head bowing sharply beneath the agony of relief. 

"I want you to listen to me closely," Yuki said in an entirely different manner. "I'll do what I can, but I warn you, that’s very little by myself; a lot less than a layman like yourself realizes. I'm only going so I can keep this- this person alive until we can get him to a hospital. I will not be party to some suicidal decision that will kill a man for whatever reason."

"Bring antibiotics and whatever you can," was all Ryou said. "Once you've seen the situation and evaluated his condition, I'll abide by your decision, I promise." He was not going to try to argue, not with that tone of voice. That'd been the tone of the fine doctor his brother had surely become, and who would not compromise on his Hippocratic oath. 

"I'll hold you to that," his brother muttered from the bedroom, tearing off his pyjamas; jogging pants and a t-shirt were already laid out on a nearby chair. "I can't believe I'm doing this…I'm holding you to your other promise too, that this is not illegal," Yuki added in the more waspish tone Ryou was familiar with. "I'm mainly going in order to see what kind of mess you're mixed up in, so that father can figure out what we can do to get you out of it."

"I'd almost be interested to see him try," said Ryou under his breath, faintly enough where Yuki failed to hear him over the sounds of his hasty preparations.

\---

Yuki, stiff-legged, walked over to the car idling in Daisiki General’s patient drop-off zone. His cheeks were so red he might as well have been slapped. He was almost to the driver's door when he realized Ryou had slipped behind the wheel. 

"Why are _you_ driving?" 

"I know where we're going, it'll be easier. Did you get what we need?"

"Yes," Yuki answered shortly. He opened the rear door of the small Daihatsu to deposit his tennis bag. Ryou had expected his brother to supply himself at a pharmacy, or else walk in and out of the hospital with the stuff in his arms. He’d been informed that this would raise ‘questions’ and that he was an idiot. Then Yuki had hatched a plan demonstrating a nascent flair for criminality which Ryou found a little surprising… His brother had simply carried his previously emptied tennis bag into the hospital, his informal clothes and his well-known love of the sport providing all the cover he needed; anyone who saw him would assume he was just dropping in quickly before his set in order to do some quick work or talk to management. The tennis bag was visibly much heavier now; fortunately it was the bulky kind that also served as gym bag, ball carrier etc, and it was still bulging at the seams with a stethoscope tied to the handle. 

Yuki was complaining before the passenger door was even open. "I am in so much trouble with Arai-sensei. Surgical fellows don’t take sudden days off like this. I had to say it was a medical emergency in the family. Not that that helped. I thought old man Arai was having an aneurysm. Fortunately I was only booked as an assist for the gall-bladder op tomorrow, but do you have any idea what this does to the schedule? And to my prospects for this year’s rotation?"

"I'm sorry. I can guarantee you won't have any problems with our government or the police, but I can't help you with the hospital." Ryou's hands were tight on the wheel, waiting for his brother to fasten his seatbelt. 

Yuki stared at him. "...Are you working for the US? Or NATO or something?" 

"We said no questions until we get to where we're going."

"...I can't believe you're wasting time getting me. Do you have any idea how critical the first hours after an abdominal injury are? And you say he's been left over half a _day_ without more than palliative care? You realize-...um..."

"Yes, I realize," said Ryou shortly. He'd promised to return, though, so he wasn't going to think about what he might find when he did.

He could feel his brother stare at him as Ryou started the car abruptly.

"I brought antibiotics, a field surgery kit, an ambulance pack with saline drips, pressure bandages and the like, but I did not bring any morphine," Yuki finally said.

"That's okay, we’ll be fine." The Hygieans had their nostrums that could put a man to sleep through the deepest pain; _charis_ , the Goddess' Mercy they called it, since many who got that far never woke up, but slipped away in better conditions than many humans had known these past five thousand years. This whole thing was such a desperate gamble anyway...

"Controlled substances are under lock and key," Yuki muttered. "It's only because I knew Sashino-sensei's coffee-break schedule and key-in password that I managed to score the RMX, Heparin and Nitropress without signing them out, but Inventory are going to be even more incensed than Arai-sensei if they ever find out about this… So where are we going? How far is it anyway?"

"Not far. Let me concentrate." Driving a car was not, as it happened, like riding a bike. Ryou kept grinding the clutch. It was a testimony to how preoccupied and confused Yuki was that he hadn't noticed.

...He was going to be more preoccupied and confused soon. Ryou could barely believe he was doing this, dragging Yuki into his mess, into danger, across the dimensions and into the Outlands. But he had to. There was just no other way. Darius would likely not survive the trip to Tokyo, and no other doctor would follow Ryou blindly like this. Ryou did not think himself up to learning how to kidnap a stranger in the scant hours he had left before it was too late.

Eventually the city car was cruising the main road of the mah-jong parlour district. Ryou searched for his arrival spot, but he'd come in from another direction earlier, and the whole place looked so different, nearly alien as he drove on. Colours, signs, flashing lights… it was more distracting than the market on a busy day. Fortunately traffic was light in this area, so Ryou wasn't at risk of rear-ending anyone while he searched for landmarks he'd not seen in over a year. 

"What the-...?” Yuki stared out the window over his shoulder, thumb poised over his cell on which he'd been texting with an increasingly gloomy scowl during most of the ride. 

“What?”

“That was weird. I saw two policemen push a horse into a truck back there."

"Really? Close enough then."

"Huh?"

"Yuki..."…thank you for being my brother, for coming despite having every reason not to, I am so very, very sorry for what I am about to do to your world, but know that I will lay down my life to keep you safe... "Things are going to get a little confusing now, but whatever happens, just stick close to me. I'll make sure you're back here as soon as I can."

Yuki made a noise of uncertainty that turned into a yelp as Ryou floored the accelerator. With a whine of its scant cylinders, the Daihatsu picked up speed along the deserted avenue. Ryou ran through a red light regardless of his brother's sharp protest, and closed his eyes. 

...It was complicated because _this_ point in space and his destination were not only on different planes, but also in different areas of said planes, which meant he had to move in three dimensions as well as the unusual extra ones that Zaratusra had somehow created or found. But he'd done it to come here, and piercing the Veil from that direction was even harder than the one he was going in now. This close, he could feel the tenuous scar of where his arrival had punctured reality, and beyond that he could feel the Path, the one he'd created himself in his amateurish way; he could sense it nearby at the edges of his perception. It pointed the way back home.

The sunlight and the streets of Tokyo disappeared, and the wheels of the city car thudded over beaten sod and grass.

Ryou piled on the brakes. He'd not bothered with the bridge and the water this time, he'd not needed that manifest brink in this direction. But that meant that he did not really know where he was in relation to the gorge that split Mooncrest in half. He was _not_ going to get into a fatal car crash now!

The Daihatsu swerved and nearly tipped as its wheels ploughed soft sod. Then the motor abruptly died, leaving only the ping of cooling metal. 

Ryou leaned his head against the steering wheel. He didn't feel as bad as the first time he’d ploughed through the dimensions while hanging Euclidean geometry out to dry. He'd followed his Path back rather than hammering it through the planes. On the other hand, that meant that he'd blazed a trail that Something could follow. One dimensional creepy crawly was enough for one day. With an effort that raked out the last shreds of his stamina and laid it raw, Ryou did a cursory job of sewing up the rift he'd left and erasing his tracks. The Passer of Mooncrest could do the rest, or at least summon a Son of the inner circle when he saw the mess.

"...Where..."

Ryou opened his eyes. It hurt, so he closed them again. "It's okay, Yuki, I'll explain."

"...Where did...where… _how-..."_

"I need a minute first..." Owwwww, pins and needles in his _head..._

"Ryou?" His brother was talking in the squeaky breaking voice of his teenage years. "There's someone out there!"

Ryou cracked an eye open, cautious. Someone was okay, someone could be handled; some _thing_ could kill them.

A stelae stood squarely in the headlights beam. A shoulder check showed him another to their left. The Daihatsu had skewed sideways through the border and was now outside the circle of stone. The someone Yuki was referring to was Rand, approaching the car from an angle, wide unblinking eyes gleaming in the headlights.

"It's okay, he's a friend." Though the way Rand was moving like they were something strange and quite possibly dangerous made Ryou's reassurance sound weak. He waved through the windshield, but wasn't sure Rand could see him through the headlights’ glare. His attempt to pull open the door handle failed. Maybe it'd been damaged on arrival. Ryou had to apply both hands, fingers feeling as strong as udon, to wrench it open and get his seatbelt off. 

He promptly spilled out of the car and into the dirt.

"Ryou?!" Yuki’s head whipped around in alarm as he tried to keep an eye both on the large man approaching them, dagger in hand, and his older brother who was acting like a drunk. 

"S'okay. I'm fine." That last word made him smile, Darius always teased him about- Darius- _Darius._ Pull yourself together, Ujiie Ryou; as they say in Assyria, you’re only two steps into the race. 

"Rand!" he called out. An instant later, a strong hand grasped the one Ryou was feebly waving around. 

"Are you well?" Rand asked gruffly.

"I will be," said Ryou with grim determination. "Rand, that man in the car is my brother. Get him to the palace as quickly as you can and keep him safe for my sake."

"He'll be as safe as the mountains," said Rand tightly, gripping Ryou's shoulder once before spinning towards the car. Without any fear or hesitation, he barged his way into the boxy vehicle, gripped a panicking Yuki by the shoulders and pulled. He was momentarily foiled by the seat belt, but he got through the obstacle with one cut of his dagger. Ryou closed his eyes on the rest of the scene. Explanations were going to be a joy.

"My lord?"

Ryou looked up. "Jexen, I'm sorry I took your horse."

"Fuck the horse, are you okay?" Jexen was staring fearfully at the car.

"I'm fine. Well, no, I'm not. Jexen, please go into the- that vehicle, and get the bag in the back seat."

"I'll do it," growled Hamado, brushing past the petrified Jexen. The Aksumite crawled into the car with nothing but a wrinkle of his nose for the odd smells he must find there, grabbed the tennis bag- and nearly drew his sword on the stethoscope tied to the handles as it wound its rubbery way around his fingers. 

"That too," said Ryou, then, gripping Jexen's shoulder: "My friend, I need you to do something for me, for me and for Darius."

"Anything," said Jexen without hesitation.

"I need to ride with you, and you're going to have to hold me because I might pass out," said Ryou grimly. "Don't let me fall, but get me to the palace as soon as you can. My brother just left with Rand, and I forgot he does not speak the language."

"Right away, my Lord."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Yuki, even if he’s a bit of a drama queen and a sourpuss. In fact that may be why I love to write him ^__^ Expect a lot more arm waving next week.


	4. Chapter 4

Ryou wouldn't remember much of the ride back. He kept trying to go to sleep, but that bloody horse would nearly roll him off, and that equally bloody Jexen would shout in his ear, asking him if he was, against all reason, alright. 

The bastard Hound was doing it again, shaking him. Ryou fought his eyes open, his mouth already spilling out a few slurred swearwords suited for soldiers.

They were back in the courtyard of the Noble Quarters, surrounded by soldiers fighting back the night with blazing torches. The sight of Leyam looking down the steps at a petrified Yuki in Rand's grasp did more than a pint of strong coffee in bringing Ryou back to the immediate.

He slipped down from the horse on legs that felt like rubber, but his mind was clearer now. He staggered over to Leyam without waiting for Jexen's proffered offer of help.

"How is he?" he asked tightly.

Leyam glanced around at Ryou and looked startled at what he saw. "Still alive. At this point, I'd say more than you. Do you know you're as white as fish bellies?"

"I'll get over it. How is he doing exactly?" Ryou headed towards the steps and managed to make it up the first two before sagging. Without ceremony Leyam grabbed his arm and slipped it around his shoulder, assisting him up the stairs and ignoring the bevy of slaves and servants who leaped forward to help. 

"He's hanging on, that’s about all I can tell you, my friend," said the king as they climbed, the light tone only the faintest veneer over helplessness, anxiety and frustration. "He looks not much worse than when you left. I think the Hygeians are keeping him alive, barely. But it doesn't make sense. They're labouring hard, but they're not telling me what's going on. If they thought it was hopeless, they should have already told me to prepare for his passing. But if he still has his chances, then I’d expect a long speech about the Goddess's bounty and why I should promise a new gilded roof for their temple to further tempt her mercy. I've never had them say nothing before. It's like they don't know themselves."

An ungenerous thought about the Hygeians and all they did not know went through Ryou’s mind. Divine punishment followed immediately, his foot catching on a step halfway up the second stairways. Jexen managed to steady him before he fell down the stairs bringing Leyam with him. 

Finally they were in Darius's room. Ryou brushed by figures standing right and left without seeing them until he was beside the man lying beneath the decorated coverlet.

Darius did indeed look much as before, face flushed with fever, features lax, breathing regular but with a faint rasp. Dardan was nowhere to be seen. It was a good hour after sunset, the child was probably asleep. Priestesses stood at the four corners of the room praying in a soft voice while a young acolyte squatted near a brazier and fed in aromatic herbs at regular intervals. The Holy One was not here; probably at the temple leading an elaborate ceremony that required room and the presence of a large animal to sacrifice. 

Ryou took a deep breath and turned towards one of the men who’d followed him into the room. "Yuki."

His brother, bookended between Rand and Jexen, gave him a wild-eyed stare.

"I'm sorry, all this is undoubtedly very confusing, but-"

Yuki made a punctured tire sound, ripped away from Rand, grabbed Ryou by the arm and attempted to both insert his brother between him and the abductors, and also shake an answer out of him at the same time. 

_"What the hell is going on?!"_

"Shhh. It's okay-"

"Where did you take us?! Why is it night?! How - why- _horses!!"_

Ryou tried to reassuringly pat the hands that were pulping his forearm. It didn’t help much. "I know, I know, it's a shock-"

"That man- he cut- he _cut_ my seatbelt! With a knife!"

Rand, at the receiving end of Yuki's gesturing finger, merely lifted an eyebrow at the foreign gabble.

"Yuki, calm down. It's complicated. We're-...in another world. Like in movies and books. It's real, we really are here, and now you know why I couldn't tell you anything."

"They threw me on a _horse!"_ Ryou wondered if his brother had heard a word he'd said. "I can't understand a thing! This place has _candles!_ It _stinks!_ Like a _sew-"_

Yuki stopped his wild gesturing as if someone had hit the Off switch. He'd caught sight of Darius. He stared for a frozen second, then let go of Ryou’s arm, went to lean over the bed, eyes like a high-caliber machine first on Darius's face, then on the lift of his chest. He felt the pulse of the limp hand, touched the sweat-damped forehead, checked the pupils and sclera. He felt the lump visible on Darius’s head with his fingertips, pressing around it, then he started feeling down the neck, the muscled arms, the chest. His eye caught the stain of blood on the coverlet and he drew the latter down. After a blank-eyed stare of several seconds at the poultice, he moved it aside with the barest edge of one of his fingernails. He examined the injury minutely and then palpated the abdomen with an increasingly serious expression. 

“Ryou, we need to take this man to a hospital,” he finally said.

“We can't.” Ryou rubbed his face, the grime on it, the wretched tiredness and stress making his eyes sting… “I can't tear a path all the way back to Tokyo from here, not in this direction. If I did, chances are we'd not end up anywhere near where we would want to go. And we cannot take him to the border, the place we arrived at. I don't think he'd survive several hours of travel in the back of an oxcart, and poling a boat upcurrent is even slower.”

Yuki stared at him as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “But-... Ryou…”

“I know you may not be able to help. But please try. He's got no other chance otherwise.”

“You don't understand. I can't do anything.” 

“Give him a shot of antibiotics, and...fix it.” Ryou half gestured at the wound, which seemed even angrier and puffier than before. It was, it really was more swollen, the edges pulling so hard at the stitches that the silk thread, now a dark red almost black, was sunk into the flesh in places. Ryou’s fingernails bit into his palms, but he forced himself to stay focused.

While he’d been staring down at the injury, his brother had been boggling at him. “Fix it? Fix it?” he finally echoed. “You took me to the goddamn feudal era-”

“Historically speaking, much further back than that.”

“-and you expect me to do abdominal surgery by myself?”

Ryou nodded soberly. 

“Do you have _any_ other doctor on hand?”

“No.” 

“Nurses- you mentioned nurses.”

“I… was exaggerating a bit. These women know some healing, but it’s- it’s shamanistic level at best.”

“...Oh.”

Ryou expected his brother to argue and fuss some more, but Yuki did not. He looked around slowly, at the mudwashed wall covered in bright lively murals, at the priestesses, hennaed hands held up in supplication as they prayed in a mutter, at the candle sconces, at the brazier. Then, moving like a sleepwalker, he turned to the tennis bag Hamado had put down on the ivory chair before leaving. He unzipped it, stared at its contents for a short moment before removing a saline bag and returning to the bed where he looked around in vain. 

“You need to suspend that, right?” Ryou guessed. “I can have someone hold it.”

“Oh, and get more dirt and germs in here? This place is filthy, this- this is insane. Everything is insane.” The bag sunk to Yuji’s side in defeat. 

“I know, but please do your best.”

Yuki actually groaned as if that’d been so stupid a request it had physically hurt him, but he got moving again. 

“I need something to hold this, and a table - clean, if possible. And not _that.”_ He pointed a horrified finger at a woven rattan table. “Get _that_ out of here. Get everything out of here. No! No, wait, that will raise dust. Just… ugh.”

“I don’t think it will make much difference in final,” Ryou said quietly. 

“Okay, Okay.” Yuki savagely scrubbed his face. Then he looked at his fingers with a deep frown. “I need to wash my hands, I was on a horse.”

“...Ah.”

Yuki stared at Ryou, waiting for the latter to take him to a sink with a soap dispenser and Ryou stared back, measuring just how complicated this was going to be.

“Give me ten minutes.” 

He left his brother behind in the act of telling him they did not have a ton of time to spare as it were. 

Ryou dragged a metal spear stand over, borrowed a javelin from one of the guards outside, put the weapon in the stand and hooked the IV’s loop over the tip. A metal table, a small delicate thing of filigreed copper from the dining area, was sluiced down with the rawest, crudest palm liquor Ryou could procure in a pinch (the Hounds could reliably be counted on for that), dried with brand new cloth, and then put next to the bed to receive the various bottles and instruments Yuki was unpacking, keeping them in their sterile wrappings for now. By that time, Peistratos had prepared a basin of boiled vinegar water with lye soap for the doctor’s hands. There, problem sorted. All problems could surely be sorted if dealt with calmly and methodically.

Yuki seemed to come to the same conclusion, because he drew himself up, slipped on clean scrubs over his t-shirt and looked as professional as circumstances allowed despite the hair that’d been blown into a crazed quiff by the horse ride. In fact that didn’t last either once he pulled a paper cap over it. A surgical mask fitted over his scowl, latex gloves snapped on with a sound as alien to antique Assyria as a UFO, and Yuki stood straight as a scalpel, a picture of competency, an avatar of the modern medical world, ignoring the stares of superstitious wonder coming from all corners of the room. 

First off, he picked up a bottle of antiseptic-grade alcohol and a cotton ball. A thumb-sized vial and syringe waited nearby. After swabbing Darius’s left arm at the crook of the elbow, he measured out and injected something or other, then, after thinking a bit, he selected another tiny bottle from a line of others. He injected some of its contents into the IV bag after giving the spear one hard look informing it that it was no way up to snuff, but he’d conscript it into this affair in the name of efficiency; it just better not get too big for its boots.

He took Darius’s vitals again, and even broke out a pressure cuff and thumb-screw oximeter. He scowled at those results for a minute. He looked around searchingly, then scowled even more fiercely. 

“Damn it- Ryou, can you write down the numbers I tell you?” 

“Of course, let me get a tablet.”

“Good. Uh- a _tablet?!”_ Yuki glanced around wide-eyed for the iPad he’d apparently missed.

“A wax tablet.”

Yuki swayed for a split second but rallied like a champ, jaw setting firmly. The doctor was penciling in his nervous breakdown for after the operation.

Ryou faithfully marked down the letters and numbers his brother dictated, which he recognized from a lifetime ago as heart rate, oxygen saturation and blood pressure, though he couldn’t remember enough to know whether Darius’s were good enough in the circumstances or frightful. His brother’s scowl was too deep and impenetrable from the start to garner a clue.

He read back the numbers to the doctor who stood, arms crossed and glaring down at his patient, then he asked: “Do you need anything else?”

Yuki didn’t look away. “Yes, an anesthesiologist, intraoperative ultrasound, a team of surgical nurses, suction, oh, and an x-ray machine to verify there isn’t a hairline fracture in the skull. An MRI to check for clots and bleeds would be useful as well.”

Ryou gave his brother a heavy look that unfortunately missed its target since the doctor hadn’t turned away from his patient. 

But when Yuki looked up at him after another silent minute, the attitude was gone. The familiar eyes above the mask were creased with worry. There was also a sort of remote sympathy in the way his tone lowered. “Ryou, since you’re the only one here who understands what I’m saying, I’m going to have to ask you to assist. I know this is not going to be comfortable for you...”

“I can do it.”

“Good.” Yuki was back to talking like a surgeon, all briskness. “Get my penlight out of my bag - side pocket - and point it at the injury. Keep it steady.”

Ryou obliged, locking his emotions away under the tightest of control. 

With a scowl Ryou could see clear through the mask, Yuki cut the straining silk stitches and mopped up some blood that came oozing out. Under the harsh electric light no Assyrian night had ever known, the injury stood open like a silent red scream, more vivid than under the inadequate candles. 

“Hmm,” Yuki muttered, staring at it hard without touching the clotted mess. 

He got closer and closer, moving from one angle to the other, while Ryou played catch-up with the light. “Hmmm.”

Then to Ryou’s amazement his brother bent right down until his nose was a hair’s breadth from the hole in Darius’s side, and sniffed so long and hard that his mask tented and you could make out his nostrils. 

“What are you doing?” Ryou whispered, glancing instinctively at Rand and Leyam, standing and staring on the far side of the room. 

“He’s searching for the scent of death.”

“Huh?” Ryou turned to where the oldest priestess still stood. He’d forgotten their presence, the droned prayers firmly ingrained into the backdrop of his mental landscape after two years in Assyria. “The scent of death?”

“Yes. We did the same,” she added and stuck up her nose with a validated air. 

“Hm-hm, you could call it that.” Yuki barely straightened as he answered Ryou distractedly (he wouldn’t have understood any other word in the room.) “Now, I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Ryou, but I don’t smell any spillage.”

“Spillage?”

“From the bowels. Considering the area where he was stabbed, the bowels could have been perforated. There could still be a small cut and leak, but if there’s no significant tear… the peritonitis could be from… hmm…” Yuki tilted his head, then leaned down even further and craned his neck to try to peek beneath the patient. “Is there an exit wound?

“Yes. It’s smaller.” It had been easier to stop the bleeding on that one, he’d almost forgotten about it.

The scowl above the mask deepened. Yuki crouched down low, leaned sideways.

“Where is it?” he asked after ten seconds of looking.

Ryou scraped through his recollection of this long, horrid day. “I think it’s lower.”

“It can’t be lower. Seriously, where is it?”

“I… I don’t know, Yuki, it’s been hours since we-”

His brother suddenly jerked, eyes zeroing in, shoulders tightening. Ryou supposed the exit wound had been found.

Yuki stared, then bobbed up abruptly to stare at the wound on the abdomen. Then he scrunched down again, stared, popped up again like a mole out of its hill and then down again. Ryou glanced at the priestesses at a respectful distance in the four corners of the room, staring at the madman from a distant land. 

“Get me- this is- get me- damn it! Get me, I don’t know, something- something about this long and that’s fucking _clean_ if you can- no, wait, here-”

The box of instruments rattled like castanets as Yuki fumbled one open, took out a pair of strange-looking scissors, the first thing at hand, and then held them out like a painter held his brush to measure the scenery with his eye. He was holding them at an angle, blade at the level of the puncture wound in Darius’s abdomen, the grip angling sideways and down until the instrument was almost at a forty-five degree angle.

“I told you the exit wound was lower than-”

Yuki sprang up like a jack in the box and was suddenly right in Ryou’s space, hands hovering as if he wanted to grab Ryou but didn’t want to soil his gloves. 

“These people-” Even beneath the surgical mask, Ryou could see Yuki’s jaw working. “These people-” his voice dropped to a hoarse, horrified whisper, “- are _human,_ right?!”

Once more Ryou’s gaze flitted towards the Hygeians. The one stationed in the north corner was very young, no more than sixteen, she must be gifted to be in on this important task. She was staring at Yuki with something like sick fascination that bordered on religious fear.

“Of course they are.”

“Are you _sure?_ Have you- have you actually- do you know this for a fact?”

“Well… yes. Remember, Darius was examined in a hospital back in Tokyo two years ago.”

The eyes widened and went almost glassy. “Oh. Right.”

“Why-”

His brother was in his face again. “What the _fucking hell_ happened, Ryou?! What exactly was he stabbed with?!”

“Um…. It’s hard to say. Why?”

“Because this injury goes _right through the ilium!_. This kind of trajectory- no, not even a bullet could- it’s like he was- was- it’s like something went right through him without stopping while going through one of the thickest bones in the body!”

“Oh. That’s quite possible.”

Yuki swayed back. 

“It was… ah, it’s hard to explain, but he was speared through with something that both was and was not in our space.”

If Yuki swayed back any further, he was going to end up on the bed. “Wh-what?”

“It’s-... I don’t think it matters. Does it?” 

Yuki seemed to struggle through various shades and degrees of agitated interjections before settling on one in particular. “Yes it matters. It matters a lot. Because something is causing peritonitis, and if the gut is not perforated, then whatever stabbed him - however it stabbed him- it might have left debris in the incision and that’s what’s ki-... what’s causing the inflammation and fever. So what was it?”

“...An animal.”

“What?”

Ryou explained briefly.

Yuki had to sit down in the ivory chair for a couple of minutes while Ryou assured him that the creature was truly gone.

“Okay. OKAY!” Yuki slapped his thighs to push himself into the upright position and stride towards the bed. Then with a scowl he changed his gloves, talking, it seemed, to the fingers he was squeezing into the latex. “In final - in final we still have to get this reopened, properly flushed, we need to investigate for dirt and debris, and we need to do this now.” He seemed to be bossing himself around like he was the attending surgeon barking orders at a foolish time-wasting intern. “Ryou, you will be in charge of the sponges - get your hands washed and gloved, please, I’ve got a whole box right here. You will mop up the blood carefully, you will apply the sponges where I indicate with the scalpel, you _will_ remember where you have put each and every one of them and you will collect them all when we’re closing up, or else - or else you’ll be finishing off what your spider-dimension thing missed doing the first time around. No- wait - before you glove up, can you fish around in there - no, there- next section - yes, I need a big bottle marked PVP-I and some cotton swabs. Let’s get this operating field as clean as humanly possible in the next two minutes. I suppose you don’t have a brand new disposable razor?” 

“I don’t even have an old non-disposable one,” said Ryou with tired sarcasm. “We have a barber with very sharp knives-”

“No, absolutely not, we are not getting another person in this room to lean over this injury,” said Yuki with a dark look at the nearest priestess. “In fact, get- get everyone out. Out! Now!”

“My brother requires the room, please,” said Ryou diplomatically to Leyam. The king, who’d been staring with wide eyes at Yuki the whole time, blinked at Ryou and then looked around. There was a short pause; Leyam was not used to getting tossed out of anywhere. But then he clicked his fingers wearily.

In very short order Rand had everybody outside, including the priestesses carrying - at Yuki’s insistence - the still-smoking brazier. 

“Thanks, Leyam. Go get some rest,” Ryou whispered near the door as he walked the king out. “I’ll send for you if there’s any change.”

Leyam nodded somberly. He did not look hopeful at all, but he was wise enough to know when things were out of his hands. He left in silence with just the one backward glance at the half brother who had saved his life, suffered, fought and triumphed at his side for nearly three decades. Ryou gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile and pulled the curtain shut behind his friend and king.

It was even odds Yuki hadn’t even noticed any of this. The coverlet had been thrown on the floor, blue sterile drapes now covered most of the patient outside of the injury, some tucked under him as well, and Yuki was busy painting the exposed area with a brown tincture while muttering to himself about follicles, care and scrubbing. 

It was easier with the sterile drapes in place covering a good part of the familiar body, it allowed Ryou some much needed detachment as he watched, under the light of the flashlight taped to the IV ‘stand’, his brother remove all the stitches and start cutting in tiny increments to debride the ragged edges of the wound. After each snip, Yuki shot the body beneath the sheet a very hard look for any reaction, but the patient was well and truly out of it and didn’t even twitch. 

Without any further whinging about the conditions, Yuki poured saline into the injury, then sucked it out with a tracheotomy tube and a bag valve assembly he’d converted into a suction device with the help of a lot of surgical tape. Once the area was a little less flooded, Ryou sponged up any spurt or slow trickle of blood that tried to get in the way, memorizing where he left the sponges he didn't immediately remove, sopping wet with fluids, to drop on the floor. Focusing hard allowed him to bypass the thought of who they were cutting into, even shut out the image of guts moving like snakes beneath the pressure of the doctor’s movements in the depth of the injury, bulging forward… Ryou closed his eyes, breathed in and out behind the surgical mask he’d donned, and counted once again all the sponges in his head and matched them to their location. It left him centered. Yuki being so professional and matter of fact about all of it helped too.

Yuki was muttering to himself on and off, technical terms under his breath he’d normally be bandying around with an attending or nurses. Ryou couldn’t make much sense of most of them, but one caught his attention.

“Odd? What is?”

He got nothing but a grumble for an answer until he prompted his brother again.

“Injury is actually quite manageable. I’d have said it was superficial if I didn’t know there was an exit wound. No damage to the intestines that I can see.”

“That’s good, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“Yes?”

“Just odd. Even the mesentery is intact here... really wish I had ultrasound...” Yuki replaced the forceps and scissors with his finger for a moment, felt around with a scowl. “...maybe I’m not in the right place… can’t find where… can’t find the hole leading deeper… oh, here’s some debris… so right location then… just a sec…” Forceps lifted out a small piece of black matter and dropped it on the floor to join the sponges. They were soiling a rather nice rug Ryou had bought for Darius a while back, a small simple tightly woven throw in tones of light cream at odds with the over-decorated palace specimens, which was why Ryou had liked it. But he accepted its sacrifice without question, it’s color and weave would help him find and count the sponges later, and check over whatever pieces came out to see if they were all there. 

It’d only been fifteen minutes since the operation started, and the wound looked much cleaner and already less inflamed to Ryou’s exhausted eyes. In the area of his head he’d entirely shut down until now to focus on solutions, a flicker of something human and real and warm took life, a wispy faint hope...

Then Yuki froze mid-motion with his scalpel in the injury.

The sudden intake of breath and the ugly bunching of his shoulders took Ryou’s hopes and turned it to icy dread.

“What? What is it?”

Yuki didn’t answer. The scalpel moved up and down incrementally - more a poke than a cut - and then it was replaced with Yuki’s gloved finger, sunk into the wound up to the second joint, which echoed the same movement.

“What? Yuki? What is it?”

“Shh.” Yuki closed his eyes and felt around, finger barely moving. He spent some time looking down his hand into the injury, leaning sideways as if trying to see right through the abdomen. Then he used his other hand to carefully feel into the much smaller exit wound, eventually using his pinky to probe it delicately.

His shoulders sagged. Ryou’s heart lurched and stopped.

“What?” he whispered.

Yuki looked up at him slowly. “There’s something in the injury.”

“You said there’d be debris. That’s why he’s-” But Yuki was shaking his head slowly.

“No. This is more than debris. The-... whatever, er, stabbed him, it’s still in there.”

“What?!” 

“It’s still in there.” 

Yuki removed his hands. They fell limp at his side. And for the first time in the past hour since he’d checked Darius’s pupils, he looked down at the face of the man he’d come here to save. He looked at Darius, but he was talking to Ryou when he said, “I’m sorry.”

“What exactly is the problem?” Ryou asked tightly.

His brother stirred and gestured with his finger at an angle. “The-... whatever, thing, it broke off in the wound.” 

“Can’t you remove it?”

“I wish I could,” said Yuki softly. “I-... I suppose I have to try, but Ryou, this? I need you to understand. The-... object broke off deep inside and is spearing him right through the iliac crest.” Yuki looked up, met his brother's eyes directly. “Even back home, this would be a terrible injury. It’d require a major operation, proper anesthesia, intubation, an O.R., suction, and above all, a bonesaw, a _specialist_ with a bonesaw. And also a graft and surgical reconstruction if he ever hoped to walk again.” But by the throwaway fashion Yuki added that last part, he didn’t think that either walking or not walking was even on the table. 

Ryou stared down at the little he could see of Darius, the small words ‘but it doesn’t look that bad, how can it be that bad’ running futilely around his head. He’d thought… he’d thought this was just a matter of going in and stitching up the damage the creature had caused-...

An image of the Uzayin spinning, skittering and fading in and out through the dimensions leaped to his mind. 

“Can I see?”

“What?”

“Show me where this- this broken bit is?”

Yuki sighed and signaled vaguely. “It’s here, about this deep.” The fingers pinched. “It’s poking out of the bone, maybe twenty, twenty-five millimeters. I could feel it with the scalpel and my fingers. I can feel the other end sticking out in the exit wound, and of course the ilium is right in the path.”

“But you said this trajectory was- you said you couldn't believe something could do that. Go through bone.”

“Well, no, I said I couldn’t imagine what did, and you explained that this creature- er, is both here and not here.”

“Right.”

Ryou stared down hard at the square of skin revealed by the blue drapes, and he stared deeper yet with his other senses.

It leaped out at him immediately. The debris was in the wound, but not really. It was more exact to say that it was spatially superimposed on the wound. 

In the mind’s eyes, Ryou imagined how it might hunt and fight, this nightmare creature that inhabited higher dimensions as comfortably as a crane waded through water. It could spear down with its hard appendages, jab at the creatures scurrying around in the lower dimensions they called ‘reality’ like the crane jabbing a beak through unsuspecting fish in a stream. But if it hit something whose tensile strength was greater than its chitin - like bone for instance - then it could phase right through it and avoid damaging its limb. Or maybe its entire mode of attack was to fade half in and half out of the foreign bodies it could barely grasp from its distance through the planes, ripping in and out of them at will… But whatever it had been trying to do, Ryou was willing to bet something had gone wrong just as it struck. Could it be Hamado’s spear that had caused it to panic? Rather than pull out properly by phasing out of the flesh it was impaling, it’d panicked and jerked away not-so-cleanly, leaving parts of itself behind trapped in bone. The mental image Ryou was envisioning made sense… but then again sense might not apply to a creature like the Uzayin; this could have happened accidentally or on purpose for any number of reasons that only made sense to a predator who inhabited a space that the human mind could barely grasp. Either way, the damage was done; Ryou could feel it with his higher senses because of the way it was spatially compounding with the bone, molecules meshed in unnatural juxtaposition - good god, this was the kind of dimensional mashing about that he used when he wanted to set something on fire, although since the melded objects, bone and debris, were motionless in relation to each other, they had not done much damage so far. Still, no wonder this was causing Darius pain and his body to react - no wonder the priestesses had been so useless and confounded, too! But what this meant was-

“I can get it out.”

Yuki turned his head so fast Ryou actually heard a creak of tendon. “You - what?”

“Here. May I?”

“Huh?”

Ryou gently moved into his brother’s space until the surgeon ceded ground. Then he looked down hard at the injury.

“How are you going to excise it? I palpated it, it’s lodged in there hard. Look, forget what you see on television, okay, you can’t push or pull stuff out in real life. That’s made up bullshit.” 

Ryou felt around with his mind, delineating the debris and where it intersected with Darius’s body.

“We’d need a bonesaw or a surgical drill. But we can't open the incision that much in these conditions. We definitely couldn’t do it without deep anesthesia. I… look the best I can do is to clean everything real well, close it up- you know, people have survived with- with metal embedded in their bodies for ages, and it doesn’t bother them too much.” Though he didn’t sound very hopeful.

Ryou reached out and touched Darius’s body lightly near the injury. 

“Ryou? We need to-”

“Here, give me those scissor things. The ones for lifting.”

“...the forceps? But Ryou-”

“Never mind.” There was just about enough room in the wound, so Ryou simply reached in with his gloved fingers, moved past the slick/squirmy layer of guts, felt the abnormal hardness in there beneath a sheathe of tissue and muscle, pinched the piece of material through the flesh, and lifted it out and _through_ as easily as removing a piece of lint. 

“...fuck me…”

“Does mother know you use that kind of language?” Ryou asked archly, before hope battled its way past his attempt at cool composure and sarcasm. “This is good, though, right? This is what you were worried about, this piece, so now he’s got a chance? Right?”

Yuki just gaped. 

Ryou glanced down at what he’d removed. It was the length of his palm, a section of appendage covered in chitin about the thickness of a garden hose. It must be from the end of the limb, near the spiky sharp claw. It was black speckled with grey and brown spots up close. The consistency and weight in his fingers made him think of the leg of a snow crab, but when he turned it to look down at where it’d been sectioned, he realized he was holding nothing but an empty tube of thick exo-skeleton. Had the Uzayin extracted the limb from the casing, a sacrifice like a lizard losing its tail to escape? Or was the creature itself something that did not have flesh in the traditional sense, an empty sack and armor scampering around through means unknown? Rou dropped the remains onto the rug for later examination, hoping, in passing, that whatever the creature’s physiognomy, it did still have a nervous system and that the injury it’d sustained had hurt like hell. 

“Yuki?”

“What?” His brother sounded utterly dazed. 

“Does he have a chance now?”

“But how did you-”

“Later. Is there a possibility he’ll be okay? Can you finish?”

“Er… you sure you got everything?”

“Yes.”

“How’s the, er, the bone? Is it badly, er...damaged? If you… can tell…?” Yuki would look at him no differently if Ryou had magically transformed into a walking talking x-ray machine.

“Oh, the bone’s fine I think.” Ryou glanced down at the still body of his lover, but without the spatial oddity of the chitin interfering, he couldn’t actually sense anything anymore. 

“But… but that’s not possible. It was going right through… the iliac...”

“No, it was superimposed in space.”

“...What?”

“Superimposed. Matter A cleanly meshing through Matter B. You can do a lot of that, you’d be surprised. Comes from all that space between the atoms.” 

“...huh…?”

“The bone is fine. I’m almost certain,” Ryou said briskly. “Bruised, maybe, but, well, bones heal. So, does that help?”

“Uh… I don’t know. I mean… I don’t know, Ryou, we’re way out of my area of expertise. But… but I’ll do what I can. I… well, if the debris is removed, and if the bone, er, the bone is alright…” The doctor gave himself a sudden hard shake and focused, glaring down at the injury as if daring it to do anything else out of the ordinary under his watch while he dealt with what he could grasp. “At this point all we can do is repair the damage, flush, suture and hope for the best. The drugs I’ll give him will help with the rest. Come on, there’s still a lot to do and we do not want this injury open a minute longer than it needs to be. We also need to suture the other one in the back. Pay attention, I’ll explain what I need you to do now.”

Outside the window, the march of the second night patrol echoed at a distance through the gardens. A horse in the stable neighed, dogs barked. Inside the room, there was only snipping, scissoring and a few curt orders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuki is still fun to write, though I will not miss all the italics tags I had to insert for him once this arc is finished ^__^;; Stay safe, y'all!


	5. Chapter 5

Ryou woke with a start and looked around groggily. He was in his own bed, though it took him a few seconds to remember climbing into it. A warm breeze made motes of dust dance in the sunlight pouring through his window at an angle that suggested it was past midday. 

Flashes of memory bubbled to the surface. He was helping Yuki, watching his brother stitch up layers of muscle and flesh. The night was growing just a little pale outside the window when Yuki checked his handiwork and got Ryou to take down the patient’s vitals again. Then… then the doctor took one look at Ryou’s face and ordered his older brother to bed with a “I don’t need another patient.” Ryou had stumbled more than walked through the corridor joining his room to Darius’s and collapsed without even taking off his sneakers. Which meant Ryou didn’t have to worry about details such as dressing, he could jump straight out of bed, mind a whole lot clearer, and direct his steps up the corridor again a good deal faster and steadier this time. Voices from the adjoining room had awoken him, one of them being his brother’s. 

The curtain on the other side had been left open. Framed in the doorway was a disaster in the making.

“Don’t!!”

Yuki jumped a foot and nearly dropped the cup he’d been about to drink from. It sloshed all down his scrubs. 

“Sorry- sorry, Yuki, give me a minute before you drink that. Peistratos, what did you give him?”

Peistratos, wide-eyed, stumbled over his words. “The young lord here- he said- he indicated rather- I believed him to be thirsty but- but he didn’t like the wine, pushed the cup away- I- I brought some water-” he quailed at Ryou’s look. “I know, my lord, I know what you said, but he didn’t like it with the vinegar neither, so I brought another cup straight from-”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, Peistratos, thanks, I know you were doing your best.” Ryou took in a breath, tried to compose himself. His hair was an unbrushed mess, he was in the same clothes he’d thrown up in the day before. No wonder Peistratos was looking at him like he was delirious. “Please go get some tea from my cupboard and prepare a pot.”

“Tea?” Yuki gave the cup in his hand a reproving look. “They have tea here? Why is he pushing these disgusting liquids on me then?”

“Did you drink any?”

“Why?” Yuki looked suddenly alarmed. “I- I mean I had a sip of one of the cups he brought me- why?!”

“The one with the vinegar in it? It’s okay if you just had a sip. You didn’t drink any of this, right?”

 _“Why?!”_ Yuki was turning green, though not as green as he would have if he’d actually had a chance to drink the water.

“Think, Yuki, we’re back in history - sort of.”

His brother stood motionless for a couple of seconds, then he couldn’t put the cup down fast enough, almost knocking over a small statue in the Greek style on the shelf next to where he slammed it. “You- you mean- where do they get their water?” Yuki quailed, vigorously rubbing his hands on the pants of his scrubs.

“Aqueduct. It’s actually pretty clean all said, but it’s still not something you-”

“I used it to wash my hands before I operated on the _patient!!”_

“I had Peistratos boil it last night-”

“For at least three minutes?! That’s the minimum required- and even then- he has a _gut injury!”_

“He’s used to the organisms here, and I’m sure the antibiotics will help with the rest.” 

Yuki made a squashed sound as if too many angry retorts were trying to come out at once, causing a traffic jam. 

“How’s he doing?” Ryou asked, ignoring his brother’s incipient dramatic outburst in favor of the more important. Darius was lying still in the bed, but even from across the room Ryou could tell his color was very much improved. His lover looked to be asleep. The priestesses were back in the room, praying softly. Three of them had their veils pulled over their faces, dark eyes peeping out at Ryou and Yuki in open curiosity; the fourth one, the oldest, didn’t have a veil at all and looked downright sulky. Ryou could only wonder what had happened there. 

“He’s stable for now,” Yuki said shortly, also shelving his ruffled feelings in favor of his medical files. “He woke up a few hours ago.” 

“He did?!” Ryou swayed. “Why didn’t you come get me?!”

“Considering how gray in the face you were earlier, I didn’t think I should.” 

“Was- was he coherent?” 

“How the hell should I know? He seemed to be, if the reaction of those women were any indication.” Yuki indicated the nearest priestess with a jut of his chin, radiating a massive amount of unimpressed which was explained when he added: “After talking with him for a minute, they made him drink some kind of smelly herbal soup against my _strident_ objections, since I had no idea what they were giving him and how it might interact with my own medication. He went back to sleep after that.”

His voice followed Ryou as the latter walked stiffly towards the bed and sat down on the edge of the coverlet. 

As soon as he picked up Darius’s hand, the dark eyes fluttered open. 

“Hey,” Ryou said softly, pressing the fingers between his own. 

Darius blinked a few times, squinted against the morning sunshine. “Ryou?” he croaked, then coughed. Pain flooded his expression and his free hand leapt to his injured side. He started to lift his head - and found Yuki taking up all his vision as the latter got in close to shine a light in his eyes.

“Wh-...what?” Darius muttered. “Who-”

“Hm. Satisfactory.”

“Ryou?” Darius repeated in a more familiar register as he tried to get his chin away from Yuki’s grip. It was the ‘Ryou, you’re politer than I am, so get this guy out of my face before punching happens’ tone.

Ryou’s world, fractured and bleeding for the past thirty hours, wobbled with relief and started to mend. Darius’s delirium yesterday had shattered Ryou to the core; he knew it might only partly be due to fever and shock. Yuki had dealt with the wound he could; there was absolutely nothing the doctor could do for the head injury apart from checking for broken bones - there were none - and hoping the anticoagulants would stop a blood clot and a stroke. But the return of Ryou’s normal, coherent and pugnacious partner indicated that for now at least, the worst had been avoided.

“He needs to check you over, Darius. Yuki, give him a minute and a bit of space if you don’t mind.” In his mind so giddy and warm with relief, a crazy titter of an idea took shape: that if his life was not the utter insanity that it was and if he’d somehow gotten together with Darius in Japan instead of the Outlands, he’d have been running interference between his lover and brother just like this a good many times. Well, possibly… he’d never know, but somehow the thought made a small warm light kindle inside, unexplainable but happy all the same.

Yuki ignored his admonishments, naturally. “Ask him what day it is and who- well, I’d be surprised if he knows who is the current prime minister of Japan, but whatever the local equivalent.”

Ryou scratched the back of his head with the hand not warm and clasped in Darius’s. “Hmm. The days are a complicated notion here depending on religious events; laymen like Darius tend not to distinguish them all that much. There is no prime minister here. They do have a leader, the absolute monarch of an area ten times the size of our country, but as he happens to be Darius’s brother, I don’t think he's likely to forget that name whatever the circumstances.”

Yuki blinked.

“Leyam? Is he alright?” Darius growled, ignoring Yuki. 

“He’s fine.”

“You swear? The priestess… was I dreaming? I remember a priestess - young, but with grey in her hair and the snake tattoo on her wrist, she said he had been unharmed, but now it feels like a dream.”

“You were still pretty out of it, but I assure you, Leyam is fine. What is the last thing you remember?”

Darius’s expression darkened. “That thing. The thing with the legs. I don’t…” the scowl deepened. “I don’t remember how it struck me. I- what is he doing with my hand?”

“He’s checking your pulse, your heartbeat.” 

“Nothing wrong with my heart. How is my gut?” Darius tugged at the hand Ryou was holding as if he wanted to go inspect his injury again, which he’d been about to do when Yuki had captured his other wrist. But in the end the warm calloused fingers stayed in Ryou’s own, squeezing gently. “Are you uninjured, love?”

“I’m fine.” 

“Did you defeat the beast then?” Darius asked perfectly seriously. “Was anyone else harmed?”

“I kicked the creature out of this plane after Hamado caught it with a javelin. As for the Hounds, most of them are uninjured.” Ryou hesitated. Darius’s scowl prompted him. “I’m sorry, Domones… he died shortly after the attack. I couldn’t- we couldn’t do anything. Head injury I think. He never regained consciousness. His friends cremated the body last night, they said it was the custom of his city to do it very quickly.”

“Yeah, he’s from Kaime,” Darius assented, dark-ringed eyes flickering shut for a minute. “His gods will watch over him until he reaches the peaceful fields.”

“Other than that, there’s cuts, contusions and a couple of broken bones, but mostly the Hounds are fine. Leyam and Rand are both unharmed. You were the only serious injury left. The creature stabbed at you, we think. It pierced you above the hip bone. It was… not good. I thought-...” Ryou’s throat ached, a sudden piercing pain as the stress and grief and anxiety he’d been tamping down for over a day reared up again. It made the joy and relief still burning inside him turn sharp, a medley of feelings that rocked him on the bed until he could only lift the warm hand in his and press his face against it, unable to add anything.

“That bad, hm?” Fingers, still shaking and weak, touched Ryou’s cheek. “Shh, my shield. I’m not going to leave you this soon, not if Inder still has his hand above my head.”

“No insult to Inder, but I wasn’t going to rely on him or Hygeia,” Ryou said sullenly, still shaken by his riot of feelings, including the bout of acute atheism that’d raged inside him not too long ago. 

“This… this man. He’s a priest- a doctor from Inlands.” Darius was scrutinizing Yuki again, lingering on his features and his stethoscope. The latter was taking notes on the clay tablet, doing so very studiously as if the life of his patient hung on the neatness of the characters and numbers appearing beneath the point of his stylus. Was this Yuki’s attempt to give them some privacy, or to avoid looking at his older brother the Ice Prince going all gooey over his male lover? Ryou wasn’t sure, but the banality of having to decipher his prickly little brother, instead of the abyss of emotion he’d been in a minute ago, was like a shot of analgesic, like warm relief and laughter after a nightmare. 

“How long was I sleeping?” Darius sounded dazed. 

“Not that long. The attack was yesterday morning, and we’re past the midday mark now.”

“But then how did you get… how did you go all the way Inland and return so fast?” 

“Oh, yes, I didn’t- uh, I didn’t do it the right way.” When they’d gone back to Japan before, it’d taken a fortnight. “Remember when we first came back to the Outlands together, when I shot us through to the Broken Lands? Like that, only more controlled. I may have broken Mooncrest a bit. I’ll deal with it later.” 

“As long as you’re safe… so you brought a doctor from your own lands?”

“Yes. This is my brother, actually.”

“Your-... “

“Does he seem coherent?” Yuki asked stiffly from behind his tablet, pen poised to take a note. Still no bedside manner…

“Yes, he’s fine.”

“Good. As far as vitals, the patient seems to be responding well.” Yuki’s lips pinched briefly and then he stopped talking to the wax and spoke a little more naturally, giving Ryou a fleeting look that seemed embarrassed more than disapproving. “Actually he's doing bloody well,” he admitted. “Fever's completely gone. Cleared hours ago. Couldn't believe it - but I guess our RMX cocktail would blow away germs here if they’ve had no prior exposure. Wound is as good as can be expected. There’s some swelling and seepage, but nothing to indicate any further infection. Abdomen feels normal, good bowel sounds, and he evinced no particular pain when I felt over the hip area earlier, so even the bone is probably fine, like you said it’d be. Overall… well, I won’t say he’s absolutely out of the woods yet, but it looks good so far.”

Ryou smiled faintly. “Yuki, put that down and let me introduce you properly.”

“Very well.” The tablet went behind Yuki’s stiff back, but the look he gave the prone patient, though poised and a little aloof, showed no disapproval or dislike. The brothers had never, _ever_ discussed such matters as sexuality before, it just wasn’t done in their family. Ryou wondered how shocked his brother had been to learn about Darius from their father last year… or if he hadn’t actually been all that shocked after all. Some fundamental knowledge about one’s sibling seemed to bypass the Ujiie reserve; for instance, Ryou found himself not at all surprised to discover that Yuki was not a homophobe, it was like he’d always known that about his brother without actually talking about it. 

“You won’t be able to understand each other’s language, but I can translate. Yuki, please let me introduce Darius Par Sirrian, prince of Assyria and my friend. Darius, this is Yuki, my little brother.” 

“Doctor Ujiie,” said Yuki out of kneejerk reflex. 

“Right, Doctor Ujiie Yuki, my brother who has just done me a very big favor.”

Darius moved - flinched before he even started to wedge himself up to sitting and slumped back. His eyes fluttered. “Tell him I owe him one,” he said shortly. “Anything he wants, he’ll have it. But right now… I’m not very… maybe I can talk to him later...”

“It’s fine,” Yuki said softly in response to Ryou’s alarmed look. “He’s been through a fair amount of trauma, concussion, and whatever those nurses gave him. If you think he sounds coherent, then let him sleep if he wants to.”

“Darius?” Ryou squeezed the hand he still held. “Do you want to rest some more?”

“...been sleeping all night… don’t need more… is my brother here...? Need to…”

He was out like a light.

Ryou stood up quietly and pulled Yuki away.

“You look tired too. Do you want to rest?”

“This is nothing, you should have seen me during my residency,” said Yuki bracingly. “But Ryou, I am getting dehydrated.”

“Oh yes, your tea.” At the edge of his perception, Ryou had felt Peistrasos come in and then eclipse himself again while they talked with Darius. “Come on, if you don’t need to be here right now-”

“Can you ask these women to not give him anything else to drink?”

Ryou did so, only he didn’t ask, he ordered, getting all but the eldest priestess out of the room - they could just as well pray in the courtyard - and tasking the latter to call him if there was any change. And also not to give the patient anything, not even mulled and watered wine, without Ryou’s express permission. 

The priestess looked even more sullen, so without breaking eye contact, Ryou raised his voice: “Dionysodoros.” 

Darius’s right hand man, who would never be further than a shout away from his leader while the latter was wounded, swept aside the curtain over the doorway and strode in, all armor and weapons and fierce looks. Ryou repeated his instructions and tasked Dio to have someone fetch him if anything was wrong. Anything at all. 

Dio, still staring at the priestess like a hawk, took up his post right next to Darius’s bed, hand on his javelin’s shaft as it thudded on the sandstone floor. 

When Ryou turned back to Yuki, his brother was staring at him with his eyebrows way up. 

“Come on, let’s get you that drink.”

“Uh... all right, yes, I wouldn’t mind a break. I… Will I be safe eating anything here?”

“Safe enough, I imagine, and if not I can get you back Inlands without too much delay, you won’t starve. Come on.”

\---

Yuki didn’t like the tea, brewed long and black with a dash of vinegar and honey, but was too thirsty to complain. 

Peistrasos must have rousted the cook hours ago and sat on them to get a feast ready for whatever time the nobles chose to have it; all of Ryou’s favorites had been ordered in a fair assumption the ‘honored guest’ would like the same. The main course was rice-based, but heavy with garlic, turmeric, cardamom, saffron and other additives along with raisins, topped with fatty chunks of lamb and a drizzle of lard mixed with honey. Yuki looked at it queasily, even more so when he realized he’d have to eat with his fingers and flat bread. Which was nothing to the look when Ryou’s nod produced Samsin, a slave from the noble quarters, to kneel before them with a bowl of water in which floated gentian, hyacinth blossoms and a sliced lemon for their hands.

Yuki stared at the thirteen year old slave and the bowl until Ryou nudged him, then he jerked into motion. He washed his hands, dried them on the white linen towel Peistrasos produced, watched Ryou perform the same cleanup like he was in a trance. His eyes grew even rounder when Peistrasos, with a particularly pointed look, held out one of Ryou’s favorite tunics to swap for the dirty jacket he’d been wearing all this time. Ryou promptly divested himself of all his sweaty clothes bar the Beotian trousers, and used some of the washing water to freshen up. The linen of the tunic, flexible and rich, settled over him like an old friend, the heavy patches of the silk-embroidered squares resting over his chest where he knotted the silk cord. It was warm and familiar, he felt himself truly relax, seated in his dining area in familiar wear, and it was only when he caught the expression on his brother’s face that he realized what he must look like, what this all must look like. 

“I…” Then Yuki dried up.

Ryou’s nod dismissed the slave and the servant. Normally Peistrasos would serve noble guests persistently, even get Samsin to hold their plate if they didn’t want to leave the reclining position too much, but Ryou had a feeling his brother was struggling enough with the situation as it was. They sat on the edge of the low couches rather than lying on them. Ryou showed his brother how to scoop and handle the food, but his audience wasn’t following his hand gestures; Yuki’s dazed stare was going from Ryou to their surroundings and back again. The dining area was richly decorated as suited the quarters of a prince of Assyria; mosaics of bright colors and semi-precious stones adorned walls between delicate colonnades, the furniture was sparse but opulent, and there were a great many weapons, trophies of conquest, fastened to the walls.

“I was focused on…” Yuki gestured back towards Darius’s room. “But… uh… where are we? Exactly?”

“Let’s eat something first,” said Ryou philosophically, “and I’ll give you the highlights of my past two years.”

He’d only gotten as far as the first leg of his journey towards Essin at Darius’s side when they were interrupted.

First two women came in, brushing the ground with brooms made of long feathers, silver bells tinkling from their ankle bracelets. Then Sharmo the majordomo entered at a pompous march, fat jiggling under his golden chestpiece, eyes fixed ahead and ignoring the room’s occupants. The eunuch inspected the dining area as if already certain it would meet with his total disapproval. Quick handclaps summoned three young boys with lit incense, flowers and a taper of wax in a bowl of gold preceding Leyam in all his glory, a green tunic knotted in gold cords and a long red wig covered in gilded netting and small gold pendants like chimes, with a barely-dressed Nicodeme and Sarolea at his side holding his fan and a decorative cushion. 

Ryou got to his feet and Yuki surged to his own, eyes like soup plates; this must look like some decadent movie set to him. Whereas to Ryou, it was just Formal Leyam coming to greet a visiting dignitary, not even one of the upper echelon or that would have required considerably more pomp and circumstance as well as the auspicious sacrifice of some farm animal or other.

“Ah! Ryou! Introduce me to your philosopher brother and tell him of my gratitude! I just came from seeing the cur, who looks good enough to jump on a horse and go defeat the Romans all over again. Your brother is a priest, a prophet, a worker of wonders! Tell him he and his descendants will be blessed and have a temple built to their name right here in Sura! Five golden pheasants will go on his altar every day or I’m a blackhearted beggar!”

“Hello, Leyam.” 

“Yes, yes, hello to you too, Ryou - my, you’re looking better as well! Say, would your brother be interested in staying in court? I will negotiate with the Per Gathas, I will give them an entire province if they want it - Ecktar-Muir is pretty useless anyway - but by Ashur and Inder and Hygeia, I need this man for my own physician! I will never fear blade or poison again! Tell him - tell him of my gratitude, and that he will be covered in gold and purple from head to toe before the day is out. Tell him! You there, go fetch a coffer, one of those from the Ementar room-”

“It’s fine, my king, there’s no rush. My brother is tired, he’s been up all night, he needs rest. Do you think we can reconvene later…?”

“Of course, of course! But let me greet him first.”

“Oh of course, I’m sorry, I’m still pretty tired myself. Yuki, please bow, this is his majesty Leyam Par Sirrian, blessed of Ashur, ruler of Assyria and the provinces.”

“...huh?”

“The king of the country.”

“Uh-” Yuki shied back as Leyam swept forward, embraced him, kissed his cheek and put a hand over his heart, reciting a loud blessing in welcome. Then everyone proceeded out again, starting with the women with the feather brooms and ending with Nico, walking like a willowy bed boy and yet strategically placed to be at Leyam’s back at all times. 

Yuki looked like he’d been socked in the head. 

“You can sit.”

“What-...what-....” Stiff nervous gesture at the door. “What?”

“Your not-quite-yet-official welcome, but one that puts you under the direct protection of the king. It’s not to be sneered at.” The real one would happen in court later, if it happened at all. 

“But-...but-... I just met a king? A real one?”

“Very real, and very powerful. In fact in terms of the sheer terror he should inspire, he’s probably the most powerful man you’re ever likely to meet unless you land in North Korea or somewhere preposterous. That welcome he gave you just now insures that anyone who even thinks of doing you harm will die very unpleasantly in short order.”

“Harm?!” Yuki squawked. _“Die?!”_

“Not that anyone would- it’s just a custom. Though a useful one. This… we’re not in Japan, Yuki, or anywhere on the planet. But you’re fine, okay? I’ll be getting you back home in a day or so-”

“Ryou, where the hell did you end up?!”

Ryou scratched the back of his head. “It’s… different, and there’s some things I don’t like here, but… you know, at the basis of it, one place is a lot like the other. Learn the rules, respect the law, make friends and you’ll be fine.” 

He didn’t think Yuki had paid much heed to his reassurance, he was staring at all the details of the dining area again. 

“It’s just so… so… “ Yuki stared at a mosaic of Tilgir Par Sūmmi the Mighty in all the latter’s well-displayed virility. “It’s like being in a manga... one of those stupid fantasy ones...”

“Hmm.”

“Good grief… Why… did he, er, kiss me?”

“Ceremony.”

“...Weird.”

“There’s weirder. Uh… Rand?”

Somehow Ryou was not surprised that Leyam’s visit had, at a perfectly timed interval, produced Rand to stand discreetly back in the shadows of the hall between the colonnades. Or rather, familiar now with the gears and pivots of this palace, it was more accurate to say that Leyam had inserted his visit deliberately before Rand’s. Ryou had a gut feeling he knew what this was about...

“You have a visitor.” Rand’s face was inscrutable, he looked only at Ryou and not at Yuki who was hedging along the couch ever so slightly to put a few more centimeters between himself and his abductor from last night. 

“Per Gathas?” 

Rand nodded.

“Anyone I know?”

Another nod

“Haaskoning?” Ryou hazarded.

Head shake.

“...His wife?”

Rand’s lips thinned.

“I guess I really am in trouble.”

“I’m to lead you right away. But I am leaving five of my best men here to watch over the quarters along with Dionysodoros.”

Both glanced at a perplexed and slightly alarmed Yuki. Leyam’s greeting and protection gave the displaced Inlander some political protection even the Per Gathas would be wary of, but a few sharp blades never went amiss. “Thanks, Rand.”

“What’s going on?” Yuki asked, eyeing Rand suspiciously.

“I’m about to get very thoroughly chewed out, but don't worry about it,” Ryou said, trying to sound confident. “Here, don’t eat any more for now until we see how well the lamb goes down. I’ll have Peistrasos leave you a plate of dry biscuits and well-washed fruit for when you wake up along with some more tea. Get some rest. I’ll show you to my bedroom on my way out, you can sleep there until I get back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are we all happy to see Normal Leyam back in the saddle? :)
> 
> The next chapter is still rough around the edges, but should be out next Saturday. The chapter after that is only half written, though I do know what needs to go there. There might be an extra week between the last few chapters depending on my time, though.


	6. Chapter 6

“You can’t DO that! There are RULES!” 

For such a small woman, Diya could fill the room with both her presence and her voice. The two of them were alone in the high-up solarium, a room rife with sunshine and pleasant breezes, the walls mere suggestions between large paneless apertures, and Ryou couldn’t help but glance at them and wonder how many people passing in the garden three stories below could hear him getting chewed out. But since the Gift of Zaratusra had been whisked away without consent or ceremony right off the bat - showing that a glowering Diya was not going to put up with any prevarication, much less eavesdroppers - the only thing anyone would be able to deduce from the tone of her voice and her garbled words was that Ryou was in a world of trouble. He’d known it before he diffidently climbed the stairs to the solarium. A delegation of Sons of the Third Circle would have dealt with serious Per Gathas concerns in Sura, while Haaskoning would have added the ultimate gravitas of his present for matters involving the throne, a meeting of the greatest plenipotentiaries of the Outlands. But when what was really needed was a hatchet job, that’s when his wife would show up. Haaskoning might be shrewd, but at heart he was a nice person who disliked confrontation. Diya, now...

“It’s not something I am going to make a habit of.” Ryou kept his tone meek and non-confrontational.

“That you can be sure of.” The sheer menace in her words made his attempts at conciliation inept. Diya towered over him as Ryou sat, all five foot two of her, but the power of her mind, almost certainly the strongest in the entire Outlands, surrounded and suffocated him. In the quiet of the solarium, her words fell like lead ingots. “Don’t think you’re invulnerable just because you’re in with the royal household here. We are the chosen of Zoroaster. We _built_ the Outlands. We can lay waste to Assyria, we can dethrone its king, we can embargo the entire Pariya for harboring you until someone slits your throat or turns you over. We can DO THIS!”

Ryou looked down at the hands he had clasped on his lap. “I know, Diya.”

“But you don't think we will.” she said after a long pause.

“I don't think you will,” Ryou admitted. “I’m too useful alive, even now. Especially now, with transdimensional monsters popping out of the woodwork. If you want to punish me, I won’t fight it, you don’t need to involve Assyria,” he added before she could jump in. “However, think about the panic it will create in the courts when this incident is known and I’m no longer around to help or to blame.” 

The silence was, to use a word that barely did it justice, fraught. 

Ryou looked up at her at last, meeting the fulminating black eyes straight on while trying to avoid making it a provocation. “Diya… I really am very sorry, I am not taking this lightly at all. I put my own brother at risk coming here. If you need to whisk him back right away, that’s fine, just let me talk to him first. And consider me well and truly chastized and intimidated and contrite, just don’t expect me to emote much, I’ve had a very long and difficult day yesterday and I only slept a few hours.” 

That earned him a sharp snort without a molecule of sympathy. 

Diya spun on her heels, expending some of her anger onto the floor mosaic of Payat-Be the Wealthy. She turned sharply, heels grinding into the ancient king’s nose, and charged back over to loom again. Her tone, however, was down a notch.

“Don’t think that because this was an attack by the Ancients - _presumably_ \- that I am letting you off the hook.” Though this was an admission of sorts; it was understood Ryou could pull out the stops where the Per Gathas’ age-old enemy was concerned. Normally he could only do so in immediate self-defense, but if Darius had died, as would have been likely without Yuki’s intervention, then the consequences both in Assyria and beyond would have been incalculable. 

“I don’t expect you to. You should know,” Ryou’s honesty forced him to add, “that if he'd been run through with a sword and not killed on the spot, I would likely have made the same decision. Though in that instance - the problem was that piece of chitin superimposed on the bone, infecting the wound and- and causing trauma. If it’d been a regular injury, the priestesses would have been able to deal with it, give him a chance, or let him slip away gently if it was beyond hope - in which case just bringing a single doctor here would not have made a difference. And besides. … What was I saying?” Ryou rubbed his forehead. The drain on his resources from multiple dimensional trips, his anxiety and only five hours of sleep out of the last thirty were making him lose his train of thought. 

“You’re saying in essence that this might happen again,” said Diya, jaw tight and dark eyes burning hot.

“...I hope not. Honestly, knowing Darius - he’s very good at what he does. He’ll not fall in battle, or if he does, he’s likely to go pretty quick and I won’t have the time for anything desperate. That’s all I can say. Because if I had to do it all over again, I would.” 

That earned him a glare that would have shrivelled up a lesser man.

“I do suggest you punish me,” Ryou added as a tired afterthought. “Not sure how, but I demand that you make it spectacular, at least in appearance, otherwise all the nobles in the court will be harassing me to go Inland to fetch my Wonder Worker little brother at the slightest hangnail.” 

With an inarticulate growl, Diya started pacing again. Yes, she had to worry about Assyrian nobles, she had to worry about the other royals in the Pariya who might like to employ their own court magian if they were given half a chance, now that they’d seen how useful one was, and she had to worry about the inner workings of the Per Gathas itself; some of the Sons of the inner circles were not known for their mental flexibility or their easy adoption of new ideas such as a neutral third party. Some of them might be baying for Ryou’s blood out of principle. Diya and Haaskoning had always felt an automatic affiliation with Ryou’s point of view, all of them being Inlanders, but it was a fact that the two leaders of their order were the ones dealing with a lot of fallout from Ryou’s decision. If Ryou could help ease some of that pressure in any way, he would. 

“I’ll think about it,” Diya said on the third revolution around the room. “In the meantime, we need to get this Inlander back.” 

“I know. I was going to do it myself -”

“Under no circumstances! You made a huge mess!” 

“Sorry.” 

“We’ll do this properly. Take him through Malit, then that small Path in Sekurnalis - we can get him back to the Veil soon enough, a couple of days. We’ll leave tomorrow. The damage to Mooncrest should be repaired by then.” 

“May I come with you? Until the border? Please?”

She gave him a sharp glare to make sure Ryou wasn’t demanding or taking this lightly, but seeing Ryou look at her humbly in petition, she shrugged. “I suppose there’s no harm per se. Is he likely to fight it? Going back?”

“Good grief, no.” 

“Then yes, you can come, it’ll help keep him calm. As for your punishment… I’ll think about it.” 

Ryou nodded.

“And you are going to owe us,” Diya said measuredly, looking at him like she was chopping him up into cutlets in her head to sell on the open market come morning. Even knowing the constraints she was working under, Ryou could feel himself quiver inside. 

The one thing she couldn’t do, despite her earlier threat, was to take him away from Assyria, since that would further spread panic and rumors after the creature’s attack. Well, she could do it, but he did not think she would. Leyam had been fielding missives from the other Pariya royal courts since this morning. After what had happened at Terentius’ funeral, the leaders of the region were understandably jumpy. It was better to keep the half-suggested narrative simple: a hint that Ryou had perhaps dabbled into realms he shouldn’t have, which had brought about an attack by monsters he’d barely managed to fend off until the Per Gathas had arrived to fix the problem and save the day - fortunate for Ryou that he was Darius’s personal friend, Leyam was willing to put up with the occasional danger as long as the Path Maker and His disciples allowed it… The problem and the solution were thus both neatly contained within Leyam’s court and bolted on with the condition that Ryou was going to stay discreet and subservient to the Per Gathas, same as before. The whole incident should quickly become mere rumor soon, tall tale and then myth, absorbed into the tapestry of non-facts that wove in and out of the Pariya, and no longer thought of as a day to day matters of real politics and danger. The Per Gathas did not want the strangeness that lived a mere thought away to intrude onto Zaratusra’s carefully parameterized experiment. They were not going to make this incident any messier than need be. But he would still, Ryou was sure, be paying a price for his decision, and he had a feeling it was going to be costly. 

So be it. What he’d told Diya was the plain truth. He would do it all again in a heartbeat. 

\---

Ryou looked up from the letter he was writing when he heard his brother stir in the bed.

Yuki sniffed, groggily lifted his head - and froze.

“Yes, it really did happen,” Ryou interpreted his brother’s wild-eyed stare at the painted walls.

Yuki catapulted to a sitting position, head whipping left and right, then he untangled his hands from the blankets to clap once loudly. Looking almost terrified, he did it again.

“No, it’s not a nightmare, you’re not going to wake up. Stop doing that, it will only summon the servants.”

Yuki’s shoulders jerked, his gaze fled towards the curtained entrance as if he was ready to dive back under the covers. He didn’t look all that well rested, even though it’d been a few hours now that he’d gone to sleep; Ryou had snuck back into his room quietly after his meeting with Diya and some time spent with Darius, to find his brother unconscious with the soundness of one who’d had a few too many shocks to the system. 

Yuki mumbled something along the lines of not wanting this to be real. Ryou, giving his brother an extra minute to pull himself together, turned back to his letter, a personal and lengthy apology to Haaskoning he was going to leave with Diya.

“Are you hungry?” he asked after signing his name at the bottom and turning back to his brother.

Yuki put a hand on his stomach and looked uncertain, but not nauseous. The iron stomach Ryou had been able to boast of since coming here might be an hereditary thing…

“There’s some tea on that table there, and some fruit which I washed myself in boiled and salted water, it’s safe. I can peel it for you too if you prefer.”

“...uh… when can I go home?” Yuki asked in a low voice, eyes shying away from the copper plate resting near the bed, some small apples and apricots failing to tempt him. 

“Tomorrow.” Ryou went to pour some of the tea. It was cold, but that wasn’t unpleasant in the warmth of the afternoon. “We’ll leave after the midday meal.”

“...Oh.” Then a significant change came over Yuki. He straightened and met his brother’s gaze full on. “How is the patient? Did someone check on him?”

“I did. He had some thin broth, like you suggested. Now he’s resting. We talked for half an hour, he was perfectly coherent, but then he said his head hurt.”

“It’ll do that,” Yuki said pragmatically. “I’ll go check on him in a minute. Oh, thanks.” Yuki drank down the tea Ryou handed him without whinging about it, evidently very thirsty. He rested the empty cup on his lap with a sigh, and looked around a little less wildly. Then he frowned. “Are those women still chanting over there? Is that what I’m hearing?”

Ryou perked an ear, he’d been ignoring the distant threnody with the ease of habit. “Yes. They’ll do that until Darius gets better or he orders them to leave, which should be soon I imagine.” Darius didn’t like to be coddled, and he hated becoming the center of religious ceremonies that did not involve Inder’s arrows. “They’re praying for his recovery and for the wound to stay clean.”

Yuki muttered something uncharitable about superstition. Ryou found himself obliged to correct him.

“I don’t believe it,” Yuki scoffed, offended on behalf of science by Ryou’s description of what he’d seen the Hygeians do with his own eyes. 

“I assure you, I might not like the religious rigamarole it’s wrapped in, but I have seen the priestesses do some extraordinary things, bones healing faster than-”

“Magic? _Faith healing?_ That is irrational and ridiculous.”

“If we were Inland - back home - then you would be right. But out here, the laws of physics are a little more malleable.”

“They’re _laws_. They can’t be mal-”

Yuki gasped and went as rigid as a plank when Ryou extended a hand and made a ball of evanescent green light appear in his palm. 

“How...how…”

Ryou shrugged, banishing the effect with a flick of his mind. “That’s minor, a small-time application of a phenomenon we call dimensional weaving. I connect small portions of the air to a dimension a sliver away, causing voltage differentiation centered around my ring - it’s iron - and that produces a plasma effect. A friend of mine who speaks English calls it Saint-... a saint’s fire, I forget the exact name.”

Yuki was staring fixedly at Ryou’s hand. Ryou wondered what was blowing his brother’s mind the most, the demonstration, or the fact that the President’s eldest child had taken the opportunity of a moment of peace and quiet to dress properly, including a couple of large rings on his fingers, a colorful shawl over his shoulders, a golden bangle on one wrist and the half-moon bracer on his forearm. At least Ryou hadn’t been preparing for a party. That would require makeup…

“How are you feeling?”

“Uh…” Yuki did not seem to know how to answer that question.

“If you feel up for it, let’s go for a walk. I’ll lend you an overtunic, and I can show you the gardens.” 

What Ryou really wanted to show Yuki was the city; the vibrant markets, the scholars’ forums, the beautiful view of the whole of Sura from up in the mountains….but there were other things outside the palace gates that he didn’t want his brother to confront right away. Wounded veterans begging for alms, lepers encamped outside the city limits, children as young as eight working day laborer jobs, the occasional streetside violence against one or the other groups here, a new slave being lead away in chains, some animal sacrifice in a temple. Yuki was already looking a little shellshocked... Ryou didn’t want to hide any of the ugliness he found in Assyria and which he hoped he’d never grow to completely overlook, but he wanted to show Yuki the depth of this country too, the brutal beauty he’d found here, the interconnected web of family and friendships that held society together, the poetry and arts blending with the burgeoning love of science of their intellectuals, Greek philosophers shouting at each other in the middle of the street with more passion than any university student, and also the ordinary people far from the palace walls, from the highest residence to the lowest one-room dwelling near the bottom of the tiered city. Their teeth might be worn down after decades of eating bread made from as much mill grit as flour, but the smiles that displayed them were still easy and open, they battled on every day with stoicism, contentment and a boundless faith in their gods and their future… but it’d be too much, it’d be too hard to show in a day what it’d taken Ryou a couple of years to fully appreciate, and Yuki was already looking very ragged. Better keep it small. 

\---

Even the gardens felt alien when seen through a foreigner’s eyes. Ryou no longer noticed any of it, but Yuki… how he stared at the peacocks running around, and at the bare naked children of the staff running after them. A young stablehand, all of thirteen, handled a gigantic war-horse stamping and neighing in an ornery manner, sending the dazzling silver chimes decorating its black saddle to tinkle and clack. A young servant walked by with a pile of cushions, naked except for her linen skirt and the flat gilded necklace of a royal servant bouncing above her bare breasts.

The girl spotted Yuki and fumbled the cushions. 

Ryou stepped forward. “Hello, Deucenia. Here, let me help you pick-”

Deucenia erupted into horrified apologies, grabbed her cushions and rabbitted. The servants had gotten used to Ryou over the past two years, but a brand new mystical Inlander was too much to handle for the fourteen year old girl. Ryou could only imagine what the palace rumor-mill had already concocted about his brother and the latter’s intervention here. Instead of touring the gardens and the temple square, Ryou hooked a right and took Yuki up to the high walls near the aqueduct. A beautiful cool mist blew from the latter as he showed Yuki some points of interest from a safe distance, where they could talk about the country without pushing the poor beleaguered man from a modern world too far outside his comfort zone. 

“...It’s really like being dropped back into the far reaches of history…”

“Pretty much, yes. Some things are different from the past, this is not ancient Babylon or Sumaria. Assyrian society has changed a lot in the past three thousand years, they’re more like ancient Greece now, but that’s details. In the bigger picture, yes, we might as well have stepped into a time machine.”

Yuki stared at the azure walls of Ashur’s temple a hundred meters away. “...historians would kill to be in my shoes right now.”

“I imagine they would.” 

“So, I can leave tomorrow?” Yuki asked abruptly, as if reassured that he wasn’t going to have to go on confronting disturbing things for very much longer - or worse, end up stranded here.

“Yes, some friends are going to escort you back the proper way. It will take longer, a day or two I imagine, though they know all the shortcuts, it will be faster than if I did it myself.” Without breaking Mooncrest again, that is. “I’m sorry, though, your car will have to stay here.”

“I guess I’ll have to report it stolen,” Yuki mused, not all that concerned. When the entirety of reality turned upside down, details such as cars didn't seem that important. 

“Right.” 

“And before we leave, you have to go to this… temple?”

“Yes, first thing tomorrow.” Ryou followed his brother’s gaze to the marble and granite monument that was the temple of Zaratusra, he’d pointed it out earlier when he explained the ceremony required before leaving. “You can stay in my room for the duration. Unless you particularly want to see me spend ten minutes standing bare-foot in front of an altar loudly declaiming my thanks to the Path Maker for allowing me the power to fight monsters on his behalf. I’m warning you, as far as speeches go, it will be both long and flowery. I’ll have to grovel a lot too.”

He would have to do the same every day for two whole seasons, as per Diya's decree, in sackcloth and ashes on feast days, and counting himself as fortunate not to have to do so on his knees. Ryou would do it, yes, even down to rubbing soot on his face and hair, if that got him out from under the Per Gathas’ wrath and showed the Pariya that he was still fully under the jurisdiction of the descendants of the Prophet Zaratusra. It was for show, but it served him, it avoided having to do a repeat at any point in the future. It was not, however, the real price for his abuse. That, the Per Gathas would make him pay in private at a later date. 

“This place is so weird.” Yuki was looking at the masonry of the wall they were descending, at the trees in glazed ceramic planters higher than a man’s head, at a young slave near the kitchens plucking feathers off a pile of quails.

Ryou merely shrugged. It wasn’t _that_ strange, but he vaguely remembered that Yuki had had strong objections to tourism in third world countries before, ranging from sanitary concerns to cultural imperialism or some such - it was a long time ago, but yes, for somebody who’d never been far from skyscrapers all his life, the palace of Sura would be a shock.

It wasn’t the palace Yuki was looking at, though, he was scrutinizing Ryou from the corner of his eye. “It’s also… it also seems dangerous…?”

“It can be,” Ryou acknowledged, “but it’s my home now.”

Yuki walked faster until they were abreast and gave his brother a worried look. “But… can’t you come back with me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because of Darius.”

From the nostril-twitched expression that got him, Yuki would have expected that answer out of a teenage girl, not the hard-headed accountant he’d always known for a brother.

“You see, we held a ceremony a year ago, a month after we’d been to Japan.”

“Another ceremony? How many do these people even have?” Yuki groused. “What does that have to do with you anyway?”

Ryou scratched his head. “To answer your first question, they have ceremonies for just about everything every single day. It’s cultural and religious, it’s part of the backbone of the country. Fate is capricious here. The gods feature heavily in the lives of the people, like they did in our own not all that long ago. The ceremony I’m talking about was held under the auspices of Inder…”

The ceremony had been held under the auspices of Inder, but the location was four days' travel out of Sura and through the Paths to one of the outer provinces that had once been a Greek city-state. The busy city itself had only been a far stain of wood-smoke on the horizon; the small temple the ceremony had been held in was up high in the mountains in absolute solitude that felt almost sacred after a year of living in busy Sura. 

The temple reputedly marked the burial crypt of a demi-god, a son of Inder. Just as importantly, it was also the final resting place of his shield-bearer and closest companion who was at his side in all the rhapsodes' songs. The two had fallen together in the great battle of Theranosus some thousands of years ago, or so went the tales. It could just as easily be a myth, a fairytale, or a concatenation of a bunch of different heroes and stories; Ryou would be surprised if there truly were two bodies buried side by side beneath the granite under his bare feet, but it didn’t matter in the end. What he and Darius had been celebrating that day were the demi-god and his companion, and it was also the idea of them, their history and the beauty of their fierce legend, just as they were celebrating each other and what they hoped their own story would be one day. 

The temple was small as these things go, ten meters by ten, mostly composed of colonnades open to the fresh mountain breeze, sun beating down on the roof and the carved and painted pediment of classic Ionic proportions. A flame burned in a concave brass basin atop a marble pedestal at the center of the temple; it was kept lit all year round by a creaky devotee and an acolyte. Agog at the unexpected majesty that had graced their little mountain temple out of the blue, they’d stood off to one side with a bunch of cedar planks with wheat shafts braided around them in decorative patterns, offerings to burn as sacrifices; Ryou had let it understood he did not think an animal had to die for the occasion, and Darius, having other ways of honoring the gods, had acceded.

They had faced each other on either side of the fire in the pedestal, holding hands around the small flames and glowing embers in the bowl. They were wearing nothing but long sweeping shawls knotted at the waist and the henna decorating their chests and palms as suited the ceremony. It was once more Ryou’s preference that’d dictated the presence of the shawls; the long-ago Greek general and his friend, who had also come here once upon a time to perform a similar rite, had worn nothing but the henna. 

Leyam had said the words, dressed down in a simple toga as suited the martial aspirations of the occasion and to honor his brother. The demi-god and his companion were praised, wreaths were laid on their effigies, Inder was worshiped. The vow was made. Companion, friend, shield and sword, for as long as the gods allowed it and life continued, and then in death, to lie side by side in honor like the ones before them.

Not counting the two priests trying to disappear into the scenery, there were only six other people present (though safety had dictated the presence of a contingent of soldiers behind a curve in the path that could come if alarmed by the sound of a horn.) Leyam, Rand, Dionysodoros, Dela, Nicodeme - mainly there to attend to Leyam, but also out of friendship - and Arbi of Damanus, Ryou’s good friend in Tupila’s realm who’d taught him so much these past two years. Arbi’s attendance had the double benefit of finally giving Ryou a good reason even the ministry’s housemaster couldn’t argue with to sue and pay for the slave’s affranchissement, since only a freeman could attend this ceremony and step foot in a place holy to Inder. Eight people was a good number for Darius’s choice ending of the ritual, which was to hold consecrated martial games in honor of those laid here: javelin throwing and a short foot race around the temple. Even Leyam participated and without favoritism; anything else in a game dedicated to the gods would have been blasphemy, it was less about competition than holy rites. 

Fortunately Leyam was a good loser, along with Arbi. Ryou managed to lose more gracefully after two years of martial training under a master such as Darius, but the heart of the competition was between the remaining contestants. It took some time, but Rand tapped out next; he was getting a little on in age and he’d been injured in some mysterious (but probably quite deadly) occasion in Kaides a few months before, wrenched muscles leaving him with limited range of motion in the left arm. Nicodeme followed, the father and son sharing a proud moment as Leyam saluted them both with a cup of wine, relaxing on the temple’s granite stairs as if he was back in his palace. The five of them watched the final heat between the three professional soldiers, commenting on form and cheering them on. Dela was eliminated after a while, but Dio held on until Ryou wondered if he’d actually win this thing, before Darius took it by a hair. 

Then they all drank wine, washed off with cold water from the large skins they’d brought up on mules, laughing and joking… 

… it’d been a good day. Truly a good day. 

And Ryou wasn’t sure he knew where to start going into all this, because “See, I’m sort of rather married now,” though perhaps correct in some ways, was misleading in others…

“You could say it bound us together. Darius and I are inseparable,” he finally stated simply. “We vowed as much. But… you know, I’m glad you saw him again.” 

“Huh?” 

“I… I’m just glad you got to meet him again, that you know where I am and what I’m doing, and that I am with someone I love and will spend the rest of my life with.” 

Yuki looked mortified at this total breach of the Ujiie rules and reserve, even though he’d spent most of his life railing against the same. But Ryou thought that in a while, after he’d digested all of this and gotten over the madness of it all… Yuki would be glad to know it too. 

“But it’s probably best you weren’t there on the day - though tennis might actually give you a good arm and hand-eye coordination, as well as stamina- but the rest wouldn’t have suited you too well.”

“What the hell are you going on about?”

“Never mind. How are you doing? Are you hungry?” They’d circled back and were now taking seats in the dining area once more. Peistrasos would be here soon with the evening meal. Of course, Leyam had wanted Yuki to join them at the feast tonight in Ashur’s hall, which was going to be magnificent. There would be dancers, naked but for some scarves and bodypaint, animals roasted on the spit, liquor flowing like the river Taibor, and it could be expected that at least one minor noble would get into a squabble with another and try to knife him before his friends intervened. Leyam had been halfway through his own invitation when a thoughtful look came over his face and said, “well, maybe not, huh?” to which Ryou could only nod in gratitude. 

“...I guess I could eat. Maybe some more of those crackers and fruit, though, not the...the rice stuff. Where the hell do they get their rice? It’s got grains like barges - and what do they _add_ to it?” 

“Right, no rice. They usually serve the heavier meals at night, but I’ll get Peistrasos to bring you something palatable, and the clean water to wash it in.” 

Yuki made a sort of huh-uh noise, gaze fleeting towards a delicate golden carafe on the sideboard (which contained palm wine with fig pressings as it were, but Ryou didn't think his brother would like that either or find it any safer than the water.) 

“And more tea.”

“Yes, please, more tea.” Yuki was about to add something when he tensed, looking over Ryou’s shoulder. Ryou glanced back and then half turned on the divan, beckoning. 

“Dardan, come in. Don’t be shy.”

The four year old continued to hover in the hallway, wide eyes on the two men. 

“Come here.” Ryou patted the couch at his side. “Did Bashebe tell you? Your father is doing a lot better.”

That earned Ryou a solemn nod. The boy, dressed in one of his better tunics decorated with the Assyrian half-moon embroidered in silk, joined Ryou on the couch and stared at Yuki with the frankness only a child was capable of.

“This is the man who helped your father.”

“I know. I heard. What do we owe him?” asked the four year old who knew he was the nominative head of his household until his father was better, under Ryou’s guidance and with the king’s permission of course. Ryou tried to remember what he was like at four. Had he seized the finer details of interactions like this? Perhaps, he’d been very mature for his age. Then again, so were the children of the Pariya. 

“We owe him a lot, more than we can ever repay, but he’s my brother.”

“Oh, he’s family.”

“That’s right, he’s family, and you may call him Uncle Yuki,” said Ryou because the sun was shining, he might be in trouble with the Per Gathas but not irredeemably so, Darius was almost certainly going to be alright, life was bursting out new and unbridled all around him after the first rain of the flood season, and the best thing he could think to do right now was to see what kind of look that statement provoked on his brother’s face.

“Uncle Yuki,” parroted Dardan with a seated bow. The Uncle was an honorific due to respected family members of whatever persuasion and however close or distant or even unrelated by blood, so that did not surprise the child. The same could not be said for the recipient of the courtesy, even if he’d only understood Ryou’s half of the conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is mostly written but will either be very short, or pushed back a week to concatenate it with the following chapter, I'm still deciding. Any major delays (not that I foresee any) will be announced on my Dreamwidth account, which is linked in my profile.
> 
> Little author's note. The ceremony described is very loosely based on one of the kernels of inspiration that originally started this fic 10+ years ago, the celebration of Achilles and Patroclus by Alexander and Hephaestion. It'd take a small novelette to explain why/how/when this inspired me, but let's just say, this scene of Darius and Ryou consecrating their relationship has been canon in my head for a long time, and I was glad to add it in, one of the many reasons I really wanted to post this arc and which inspired me to pick it up again after so long in hiatus.


	7. Chapter 7

After one lengthy profession of fealty to Zaratusra was checked off his list, the rest of Ryou’s morning was spent packing his bags and preparing for the trip. The two brothers lunched with Leyam, a much quieter and private affair compared to last night’s revelries. But it was understood that Leyam just had to see the stranger one last time and offer his profuse thanks once again. Ryou was pretty sure Yuki did not understand the honor this conferred upon him or appreciated it as he should, and he just looked bewildered and uncomfortable with the small coffer of silver and gold jewelry that was thrust upon him. But that was now done, and Ryou had just one last stop to make before departure.

In response to his polite “May I have the room please?”, the priestesses, chamber slave and acolyte didn’t so much walk out as gallop, and Dela the Kush followed with a wry smile and a private eye roll for Ryou’s benefit. The latter concluded that Darius was being just about as good a patient as could be expected.

“Can’t your brother wait a few more days until I’m better? Tell Leyam to weigh in on those crow-pecked Per Gathas - damn it, a fury popped up in our fucking garden and tried to kill us! They owe us a few days of patience, damn their shadows! Give me a twelveday. It’ll be a slow train with plenty of rests, and I’ll be fit to ride by then, I swear it.” Darius looked ready to leap out of bed right away to prove it, but subsided when Ryou, seated sideways on the bed, gave him a warning look. 

“Darius, I know, but it’s not just the Per Gathas’ directives at work here. I want my brother back Inland as soon as possible. I could never live with myself if something happened to him out here.”

Darius made an indeterminate growl and looked away. 

“I’m going with Diya Alasverada, Haaskoning’s wife, and a whole contingent of magian. The Ancients won’t make a peep. I’ll be perfectly safe and back before you know it.”

Darius’s moody glare was interrupted by a flinch, he lifted a shaking hand to his face. Ryou looked around at the dim furnishings and the slices of raw sunlight coming through the sides of the boarded-up window. 

“Does the light still hurt your eyes?” he asked gently.

Darius didn’t answer, just mauled his forehead with his fingers some more, a fierce glower beneath them.

“Try to keep your eyes closed as much as you can. Didn’t Leyam say he’d have someone here to recite to you - softly-”

“I kicked him out. He didn’t know many good stories and completely botched the bits about the battles.” 

“I see. You remember that you have to take it easy. Your head-”

“I know, I know.”

“Still dizzy?”

“Only when I try to do anything like a man should,” was the withering answer.

“Use the chamberpot, eat in bed, rest, you’ll recover a lot faster,” ordered Ryou, feeling his loyalties strain between the absolute necessity of keeping his promise to return his brother safely home, and staying here to half-cosset, half-bully Darius into letting himself heal.

Darius looked back towards the boarded window with what could only be described as a manly Ionian-approved pout. “I wanted to meet your brother again under better circumstances. Twice he’s seen me now and each time a bed-ridden invalid.”

“Oh dear,” said Ryou with some sarcasm. This did not fly.

“How in hell is he going to have the full measure of me? How will he understand that I- I can protect you adequately? He must think I’m as feeble as Parnat-Zaguben! Urgh-”

“Don’t raise your voice, I can hear you just fine and it’s obviously giving you a headache.”

That earned him a rude sound as Darius went back to staring at the boarded window as if the thin slits of light visible round the edges were the spaces between the bars of the trammeled falcon’s cage.

After breakfast together and a final medical check-up, Ryou and Yuki had spent some time with Darius, but the conversation had been stilted to say the least. Yuki would have been equally uncomfortable meeting a male lover of his brother’s back in Tokyo, but could have handled it adequately with the reams of etiquette which were practically designed for this kind of unfamiliar situation: So, where do you work, oh how interesting, do you have any family, really, how many, that’s fortunate, ah, you live in that part of the city, is the commute very difficult, so on and so forth. Needless to say, this had pretty much failed Yuki entirely, and he’d never been all that good at small talk to begin with. As for Darius’s side of the conversation... well, Ryou knew what his lover was trying to say, but a lot of it wouldn’t make it past the culture gap, no, not even the description of how rare, pure black and very expensive the bull was that Darius had sacrificed for Ryou’s health last year on Hygiea’s altar when Ryou had had a run-in with a severe case of diarrhea (a subconscious attempt on Darius’s part, perhaps, to indicate that Yuki did not have a monopoly on health advice, and that Darius could also pull out all the stops if Ryou was sick.) An anecdote from the Essin campaign to showcase Darius’s ferocity in battle would fly even less. Ryou could have made do by translating meaning instead of actual words, but he did not have that luxury because the bloody gift of Zaratusra meant that both parties could understand him as he parroted their words, and this had Darius poke him with a scowl and a grumble of, “No, that’s not what I said, why are you saying it in that wishy washy manner? What will he think?” 

It’d not been a stellar example of a meet-the-family moment, though it was certainly an improvement on the one with the president last year… The get-together had been cut short when Darius abruptly fell asleep, as he was prone to do since his injury. Yuki assured Ryou this was normal in cases of concussions and should last no more than a few days, a week at most; he’d dried up halfway through the words “and if not, he’ll need to see a doctor.”

Darius looked around as Ryou caressed his cheek. 

“My lion, I told him the kind of man you are already,” Ryou said softly. “I told him how you saved my life many times, how you protect me, how we are each other’s shield and sword.” 

Lids flickered shut over tired eyes as Darius leaned into the caress. A half formed grumble fell into a sigh. 

“I suppose there’s not much choice in the matter… You are absolutely sure the Sons of the Path will return you to me…?” 

“Of course, they’ve given me their personal assurance. More importantly, they gave Leyam their personal assurance, which is probably more significant. They’ll have me back under six days, four if we encounter no issues to slow us down.” 

Darius scowled deeply and looked about to say something. But he stayed silent, only the scowl remaining.

“...Darius?”

His eyes flickered open. “Yeah. Yeah. Just have a headache. I… had a thought, but I lost it. Do you really have to leave right now?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Remember to take the medicine Yuki gave you exactly at the time indicated.”

Darius flinched around an ill-tempered nod, and grumbled that he had four different people telling him the same thing every hour on the hour, his head was not that soft, damn it. Ryou would still double check with Dionysodoros, Ryou’s stand-in during his absence; hopefully the painkillers and anti-inflammatories would spare Darius some of the discomfort from his injuries over the next few days, and the antibiotics of course were non-negotiable. 

Ryou kissed him gently, then rested his forehead against his lover’s for a second, letting the normal fever-free warmth of his skin reassure him, the closeness bringing them both comfort.

“I’ll be back soon, love. You just focus on getting well again.”

“I will,” said Darius with iron will underlying the simple words. “But I won’t be whole again until you’re back.”

“Neither will I… and that’s about as much greek sentimentality as we both can stand, right?” Ryou added with a faint smile. 

Darius snorted, then his eyes slipped shut. Ryou held his hand until the fingers were lax between his own and Darius was sleeping again. Then he left quietly, went to say goodbye to Dardan and Leyam, and headed down to the courtyard where the final packing was happening. 

The Per Gathas had organized a donkey train for their members and a mule cart for Yuki, having correctly judged at a glance that the Inlander would not be able to ride for two days straight without risking an accident or unbearable saddle sores. Yuki, looking very unimpressed with his mode of transportation, was sitting on a cushioned wooden bench behind the driver, who happened to be Ryou’s acquaintance Moennathin. His presence, along with Andrap and Diya, would give every single Ancient, from the most powerful down to the newest acolytes, more than enough hesitation. Yuki was going to be as safe as the mountains, as they said in Sura.

On the other side of the courtyard, Aangad was being readied by a couple of stablehands. Ryou double checked his packing in the silver-piped leather saddlebags that would soon be tied onto the horse’s powerful back; some change of clothes, a spare cloak, money, the like. Yuki’s tennis bag was on the pavement next to Ryou’s packing. That would be better off riding in the mule cart with its owner rather than on Aangad or in the baggage train. Ryou picked it up - paused with a frown. This was considerably lighter than it’d been originally. What-

He caught his brother’s eye. Yuki’s expression was grumpy, suggesting he’d by now figured out how little suspension the wooden seat had… his gaze dropped to the bag in Ryou’s hand and his face changed, he turned his gaze away deliberately as if suddenly very interested in the painted eaves under the golden-hued tile of the Noble Quarters.

...During one of their talks yesterday in Ryou’s room, Yuki had been fussing about all the dangers to Ryou coming from a direction the doctor would be very familiar with, starting with amoebas, bubonic plague and cholera, ending with zygomycosis, and passing through such highlights as diphtheria, leprosy and tuberculosis. One he hadn’t thought of, fortunately, was smallpox. The original disease had, according to Haaskoning, never made it to the Outlands originally; by great fortune, none of the influx of Inlanders throughout history who’d taken refuge here had ever brought it with them, or if it had once been a problem in an enclave in the far past, it’d been conquered like other plagues before it: through immediate and total isolation of the affected country, for years if necessary. As the Per Gathas controlled transport between borders for millennia, they could effectively quarantine entire regions in a matter of moments. But they weren’t always successful with countries that had by now established strong communications via roads. There were more and more of them these days, following the Roman example. In the last few centuries, plagues had swept the Outlands too. While smallpox itself was not an issue, there was some kind of similar, if less deadly, diseases around, perhaps even offshoots of it, that the physicians here had all put into the basket of ‘red fevers’; one was the pathogen that had scarred Darius’s lower back and thighs, and killed one of his half siblings in his youth… Ryou had carefully avoided any mention of that, he didn’t want to give his brother nightmares. He’d attempted to reassure Yuki by showing him the medical cabinet he’d assembled in Japan last year. Yuki had failed to be impressed. Ryou suspected that the contents of the tennis bag had now joined his supplies, along with instructions laboriously transcribed into the wax tablets Ryou had noticed missing from his desk, but it seemed Yuki didn’t want to be thanked for any of this in case it might be misconstrued as indirect approval of the measures meant to confront the unsanitary conditions here, which the doctor in no way believed adequate. 

Ryou dropped the tennis bag into the mule cart without a word and returned to Aangad, wrestling with his thoughts… There was no way Yuki could stay for a whole host of reasons, the most important of which was the fact that he obviously feared and disliked this place, and yet Ryou realized with a lurch how much he was going to miss his brother from now on, how much he wished Yuki would opt to stay and help out, bring his knowledge of medicine to bear in the same way Ryou was slowly influencing economics and politics in Sura in small but non-negligible ways. It’d become Ryou’s occupation, his ideal; he worked with the people of Sura and for them, instituting those changes that could be slowly integrated into the social landscape so that they would outlast him, and not be forgotten as ‘too different form the ways of our fathers’ in a generation or two. What amazing things Yuki could do in kind if he stayed...

But no. Diya was on her hinny, looking grim-faced at the planned trip on a mode of transportation she was not fond of, the courtyard was abustle with last minute preparations, they’d had a formal goodbye with Leyam in the great hall of Ashur before getting to their mounts, and it was time to bring his brother back home.

\--

Even if his tennis bag had been despoiled, Yuki had wisely kept a few first-aid items with him. Ryou spotted his brother taking out a couple of ibuprofen and swallow them dry. Their caravan of twelve magian and two guests had been on the road for a day and a half, resting at night in the border inn of Malit. The latter had perhaps taught Yuki to appreciate the bright cleanliness of Sura’s palace in retrospect... Now the dry, boring landscape of Sekurnalis was all around them, rocks catching and bumping the mule-cart and impacting again and again on Yuki’s sore rump. 

“Here.” Ryou heeled Aangad closer, leaned over and held out his canteen. “It’s tea, well boiled- you know the drill.”

Yuki had reached out instinctively to grab the offering. He was now holding the tea like it was a dead rat he’d been asked to dissect, staring down at it as the mule cart swayed and rocked. “How about the container? Was that properly disinfected?” he asked over the creak of wood and the slow clop of hooves.

“Yes, I drink this or boiled water all the time when I’m traveling.” 

“...You’re probably used to this place by now.”

“You’ll be back home by tomorrow, you can easily deal with any tourist’s complaint you pick up.”

“Not if it’s some strange organism from the back-end of history-”

“You can’t go without fluids, Yuki. You haven’t put anything in your mouth since you saw the inn last night. Just drink your tea.” 

Scowling, Yuki drank a bit of the tea and washed the pills down. Then, with a grudging look, he finished the bottle in five long gulps.

Ryou rode at his side for another minute, then he slid off the saddle, took two running steps to catch up to the mule cart and got in. He tied Aangad’s reins loosely to a hitch at the back. Moennathin glanced back, caught Ryou’s eyes with a lifted eyebrow. Ryou didn't know what expression he was making, didn’t even fully know what he wanted to express, but the dreamy-eyed Per Gathas seemed to understand him better than he did himself; he stretched his long frame, moved his neck, then with a click of the tongue, stopped the mule. 

“I’ll walk for a bit,” he declared, throwing Ryou the reins. The pace of their group had slowed to give the mounts a bit of a rest, some of the other Per Gathas were also walking at this point to get the kinks out of their legs. Ryou got off the cart to tie Aangad to the hitch with a proper halter rope. Their escort moved forward in dribs and drabs while the patient mules stood still. When Ryou got up in the driver’s seat and beckoned his brother to join him, they were already a few meters behind the slow moving caravan, assured of something like privacy.

Yuki stopped staring at Aangad (it was hard to say what weirded him out more, the sheer size of the war-horse or his brother’s ease with the beast) to join Ryou on the driver’s seat. 

“This isn’t much more comfortable,” he muttered without much expectation that this state of affairs would change soon. 

Ryou went “tch” to restart the mules, and they rode in silence for a while. 

“Yuki-” Ryou stopped when he realized his brother had been about to say something.

They looked at each other awkwardly. Neither did the whole ‘go ahead no you go ahead’ routine; in their family, silence had always been preferable to confusion.

“I really hope you’ll be safe here,” Yuki finally grumbled, looking around. This stretch of Sekurnalis was as sharp as knives, a dust road winding its way through arroyos of gray rock and strewn boulders, an unpleasant barren landscape a step away from the dead earth of the border. Nobody lived here full time, the ground was too arid and poor to grow crops, but groups of nomadic miners came to dig for resources and look for buried curios spawned from the shifting lands beyond; they could sell them to the rich throughout the Outlands, even if the objects were no longer in working order. Yuki looked at the sharp prong of rocks, the harsh empty landscape, a few ravens floating overhead in the faint hopes someone in the caravan would drop dead, as if everything here was specifically designed to harm Japanese visitors to this place, and his brother in particular. 

“I’ll be fine,” Ryou said, barely listening to his own perfunctory reassurances. “Yuki, I’m sorry.”

Yuki made an irritated noise in his throat and looked away. “It’s fine already, it’s not like those shamans could have gotten the infection out of a gut wound through the power of vocalisation and herb juice, so-”

“No, not that. Thank you for coming, of course, I’m sorry you’re going to be burdened with such a large secret going forward, but that wasn’t-... I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when we were children.”

Yuki’s expression vacillated between confounded and excruciatingly uncomfortable. “Uh… well…”

“You were such a little brat.” Ryou turned his rueful smile towards his brother’s profile, now adding ‘affronted’ to the mix of emotions wheeling around there. “I guess I always thought you enjoyed being the rebel, the spoke in the wheels. I bet you did sometimes, but behind it… I think it must have been hard for you. I’m sorry I didn’t see that earlier and… and said something. Instead I made matters worse by being… so…”

“Perfect?” Yuki asked sourly.

“So obedient. So withdrawn. I should have tried to shield you from father a little more.”

“I can handle father,” said Yuki acerbically, though his voice was higher than usual, a faint echo of a teenager’s protests, and behind it Ryou thought he detected something deep and wounded… Yuki would have hated his father’s approval and what it would have signified, but having no approval at all, being the perpetual problem child… Ryou could barely imagine what that was like. 

“I know you can handle him, but I still wish you’d known you didn’t have to handle him alone. I don’t know what I could have done exactly. Stuff happened when you were much younger- you probably didn’t-... I wasn’t in a very good place myself, I’m not sure I could have done anything, really, but even just knowing I was on your side and not his… I’m sorry. I really am. I’m not a very good brother.”

Yuki’s discomfort became even more acute, he looked like he wished one of Sekurnalis’ large potholes would swallow them whole at this juncture.

Old memories chased each other around Ryou’s head. It had always been so… static in their family. Even the rebel’s role had been assigned, accepted, catalogued and assimilated. Ryou had been struggling with his own demons far, far beneath the surface. He’d been absorbed in hiding, in savagely pushing down all he felt and thought so it would never catch the president’s attention again; he’d gladly accepted that his brother bore the title of black sheep of the family if it took some pressure off of him, without thinking what that might mean for Yuki’s own inner world. 

“It’s not just coming to me now because you helped me. I realized this in the past two years, seeing Darius and Leyam interact. They argue at times, and of course Leyam is king, that adds a dimension of complexity, but they… they were there for each other though some of the hardest times imaginable. I wish I’d been there for you.”

Yuki was silent for a while, not deep in thought, more like he was juggling thought and trying to figure out what to do with it. Finally he sighed in a put-upon way. “I have no idea why you’re bringing up all that stuff now, but it’s fine. It wasn’t that bad, and who cares, it’s all in the past.”

It had only been three days since Yuki had thrown ‘father’s golden boy’ in Ryou’s face, but Ryou knew exactly what Yuki meant. It’d been three days and a lifetime of scientific certainty turned upside down. After discovering that everything you thought you knew about reality was essentially a cardboard cut-out scenery over a vast amount of weirdness, details such as sibling rivalry became awfully paltry.

“The thing is… part of me knew it wasn’t easy for you too. Maybe I wasn’t there for you either,” said Yuki after a long pause, his words parsed by the hard swaying of the mule cart (which was a much more difficult mode of transportation than a driver in modern Tokyo could ever imagine until experienced in person.) “I don’t even know… I knew you were, you know, er, gay, and yet I can’t even say how I knew it, or… can you know something and voluntarily not know it at the same time? Does that make sense? Your life looked so together, you were such a clone of the president, I… Hell, why are we talking about this crap? I’m out of that bloody family, you’re so far out you’re in another fucking dimension, it’s just- it’s the past, okay?”

“Right. I’m afraid I won’t be there for you in the future either...”

Yuki snorted sharply, giving Sekurnalis another disparaging look. 

“But, you know, if the president gets on your nerves, just remember… well, that your brother knows how hard it is, and that at the end of the day, he’s just a small frog in a tiny well.” 

Yuki burst out laughing, it was honest and open with only a faint edge of hysteria to it. 

It covered for a few seconds the thunder of hooves coming towards them.

Ryou’s attention centered on the bend of the road up ahead, hidden by an outcropping of that tortured gray rock. He couldn’t see anything yet bar a veil of dust blowing somewhere beyond his direct vision, but he knew that sound; it wasn’t the clop of camels and donkeys of a miner’s caravan. It was the thick thunder of hoofbeats from a phalanx of cavalry moving at a fast trot.

The others in their party stopped walking, drew their mounts to a halt. All eyes were on the turn of the path up ahead.

Ryou’s heart lurched and dropped into his boots as the first lines of riders bore through a wave of dust up ahead and became visible. One of them wore a tiger’s skin over segmented mail and bore a standard up high, a sun disk sporting a wing-spread eagle from which hung a banner of three rectangles of heavy embroidered cloth joined together by hoops of gold. 

A Roman century. 

_Shit._

Diya was motionless for a moment, but then she hurled the reins of her mount at an acolyte and took a dozen resolute steps forward. Andrap and Moennathin flanked her immediately, Andrap letting his donkey wander unattended. Ryou caught looks exchanged between others Sons of the Path nearest the mule cart, which he’d quickly pulled to a halt. The looks were more puzzled than worried. A trifle irritated, perhaps, that something unexpected was delaying their journey. 

They did not see the danger, of course. It wasn’t centered on them anyway.

Ryou, for his part, said a quiet, “Stay here,” to his brother and slipped from the mule cart’s seat after applying the crude wooden handle that put on some brakes. The mules didn’t care, they immediately lowered their heads and started nosing the ground for grass that barely grew in this region. Ryou headed forward but was careful to stay within the first line of Per Gathas spectators, behind Diya, Andrap and Moennathin

By that time the cavalry had dropped to a walk, and finally to a halt. Twenty men in formation of ranks of five. The first two rows had small javelins at hand, holding reins easily with the other, but they held back. Only the centurion and the standard bearer came forward a few more lengths, drawing to a stop ten meters from Diya. 

“Honored one,” said the officer curtly, addressing her. “I am centurion Publius Livius Paullus, out of Messene’s sixteenth legion under legate Didius Seneca and the rule of Roma Praetorium.”

“What the hell are you lot doing here?” Diya asked, staring at the Roman centurion as if she still couldn’t quite believe his presence here. This blasted landscape was the antipodes of the Roman empire. It was also a good number of Paths away from Messene. 

“From sunrise to sunrise, honored one.” That answer, cool and formulaic, was the foundation words of Roma Praetorium. Wherever the light of Aten’s solar disk fell from one sunrise to the next - ie, as far as the eye could see - belonged to the Empire; the motto of the ultimate conquerors. What were Romans doing here? Whatever they damn well pleased, since everywhere belonged to them by the grace of Aten; no, as far as they were concerned, the real question was, what were the interlopers doing here?

This Publius Paullus was a tall man, making his cognomen of ‘small’ some sort of faint joke. He had eyes like granite. Ryou had met a lot of Romans in the past two years, they were still quite a few about; Terentius and his aide Lucius hadn't been the only traitors, and there were others too, merchants and diplomats and such, who still bided by the rules of Roma Praetorium. In private they were as diverse as any people could be expected to be, but Ryou had seen some of them in more formal situations. There was a uniformity there, of appearance, of behavior, of intent. It looked a lot like this. Paullus’s eyes flicked over the assembly, and Ryou knew who he was looking for… The thought crossed his mind that he did not and probably never would know what Publius Paullus was like in private, as a person, because he was not here as a person. He was here as the fist of Imperator Cassianus. He _was_ Roma Praetorium. And they all knew who he was looking for.

Paullus’s eyes met his, and their search ceased. Ryou felt no surprise as the officer pointed at him.

“We are here to arrest this man, who participated in the sack of Helias and the treason of the Assyrian counties against their protectors.”

This was greeted by nothing but stunned silence from the Per Gathas initially, before Diya made a dangerous noise. “Is that so? Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, honored one,” said Paullus woodenly. 

“This man is my friend.”

“Then I beg you to pardon me, honored one, but he is a traitor to Rome. My duty is to take him captive, even as he stands among you. The other foreigner as well. He is wanted for questioning in regards to his presence in our protectorates.” 

Diya stared at the centurion, who looked back, face a mask. 

Diya was the strongest Per Gathas in the entire Outlands. Without a single gesture or even a blink, she could drop an entire mountain on these idiots - not a figure of speech, a literal and actual mountain. She could spatially move them into the ocean or the desert or the heart of a volcano, she could shoot every one of them out into the Void beyond the spiral, leaving the horses behind if she so chose. She could do all this.

Ryou could hear echoes of an angry shout from two days ago. _You can’t do that! There are RULES!_

Diya could do any and all of that, but she would not, though it was obvious she really wanted to. Because there were rules. The Per Gathas were the ultimate neutral party. It was part of their prestige, it gave them power, it could even be said to be their religion. They were observers only, they could not take sides. A magian who was not one of their order had zero protection from anyone if push came to shove. 

As Ryou moved forward, the distant thought that brushed his mind was: Darius would have thought of this. Diya and the Per Gathas are used to everyone caving in to their demands without thinking, they didn’t realize that this could be a wrinkle, but Darius knows how this works, he’s fought the Romans, he understands more of the politics than he pretends to, my clever brute, my sword and shield… if he’d been fit, he wouldn’t have let me leave with Yuki and the Per Gathas only, he’d have thought to order an entire phalanx of the Hounds to accompany us. If he’d been fit, he’d be here himself…

“Ryou,” hissed Diya as he moved in front of her group, but she stopped abruptly. When he looked back, Ryou saw that Andrap had put a careful hand on her elbow. Moennathin was looking dreamily at the maniple before them and was possibly contemplating falling mountains too, he was high above politics as a rule, but the other Per Gathas had also grasped the situation. They would act instantly if Diya told them to, but it was obvious from the distress and anger on their face that they knew their leader was currently deadlocked. 

Diya licked her lips, looked at Ryou anxiously, and seemed surprised to see his faint reassuring smile. Ryou made a ‘stay back’ gesture and faced Paullus. 

“I am not hiding behind the Per Gathas.”

Paullus’ wooden expression didn’t change, though he had to be a little relieved he wasn’t going to have to elbow aside the most powerful woman in the entire Outlands to get at his target. He gestured abruptly, beckoning forward. “Good. Come with me and-”

“You misunderstand. I’m not hiding because I don’t need to. You know full well the Per Gathas will not lift a hand to you in pursuit of your duties to Roma Praetorium. But I am not one of their numbers. You’re worried the Per Gathas will protect me? You should be worrying about who is protecting you. Do you think it’s those men, those Atenites who brought you here so quickly to intercept me?” 

Paullus’s rigid expression finally broke, a start of surprise marring the mask. Ryou’s blind shot had hit the mark. It wasn’t that much of a gamble as to who was involved. 

“They won’t shield you, P. Paullus, not you or any of your men. They used their tricks to get you to Sekurnalis, but they’re not here with you now, are they. Because the Per Gathas have not allowed them to use the powers they abused to bring you against the Laws of Zoroaster, and they know they will face retaliation if they are caught. I, however, have the permission of the Sons of the Path to protect myself against attempts such as these. I have means far beyond what a maniple like yours can handle. You will let my brother and I pass unmolested, or you will be finding out what I am capable of the hard way." 

Paullus and the standard bearer beside him had regained some impassivity, though their very silence spoke volumes. The first rank of men at their rear, close enough to hear Ryou’s declaration, were shifting on their horses and glancing discreetly at each other.

The moment hung like a knife from a single hair… but if there was one thing Ryou knew about Roman soldiers, was that they took their duties and the honor of their legion very seriously. With a rictus of both tension and determination, Paullus made an abrupt gesture at the maniple behind him as if grabbing them and flinging them at Ryou. “Mellius! Caius! Grab his-”

_”STOP!”_

Roman mares were the epitome of well-trained animals, they could withstand the thunder of an enemy cavalry bearing down on them, the screams of dying men, the crush of battle. But Ryou had twisted the dimensions around him and used the unnatural space thus created to echo out and amplify that single word at deafening volume coming from, seemingly, every direction at once, and that was just too much for the poor animals. Every one of the mounts ahead - and most of the mules and donkeys behind him - whinnied, reared up or bucked, pranced and turned to run, half a dozen riders falling out of the saddle. The men fared little better than the beasts, crouching on the ground or over the saddlehorns, some dropping their javelins to clap hands over their ears, eyes wide and full of superstitious panic at what had sounded like the voice of an angry god. 

Ryou spun on his heels. “Diya!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Don’t bother the Romans! Get the Ancients who brought them here and stop them from interfering!”

“But-”

“I’ll be fine!” Ryou unhitched the tether and vaulted onto Aangad. “Yuki!” 

His brother, expression stunned and his hands over his ears, looked up at him. 

“Grab my hand!” 

Numbly Yuki complied, moving like he thought Ryou needed help getting down from the high horse and onto the cart. He made a whinny of surprise when Ryou hauled him up onto the saddle instead. Aangad, the mountain of steel that he was, barely flicked an ear. It took ten seconds to get Yuki arranged behind Ryou. In his peripheral vision, the standard bearer was getting his horse under control and Paullus was cornering his own by the reins, trying to calm it down, but those granite hard eyes went from the animal to Ryou, not losing sight of him. 

It wasn’t Paullus per se that Ryou was worried about, though, or the men here, most of whom had dropped their weapons and were still fighting their horses. No, the concern was the banner currently waving about like a weathervane in a typhoon. Ryou had spent two years now at Darius’s side as his friend, lover, confidant and counsel. In the same way Darius was finally getting interested in the inner workings of his own country, starting to question some traditions and listen to the philosophers, albeit a trifle skeptically, Ryou had perforce learned the arts and lore of battle in the Pariya. He’d seen the trophy flags, he’d examined their illustrations in books while mastering Latin, and heard them described in passionate lengths by veterans. The declarations from those strips of cloth were as clear to him as the letters of the roman alphabet: the highest rectangle represented the sixteenth foreign legion out of Messene, the second would be the flag of Paullus’ century, which meant there were sixty more men out of sight somewhere, probably behind that bend up ahead. The final yellow and red hatched rectangle indicated his troops included a group of evocati, ten veteran mounted archers who’d been good enough in battle to be honored with their own emblem under the sundisk and eagle. 

Against that kind of force, tricks like shouting really loudly was not enough. Time to make a run for it. 

“Yuki! Hang on tight!”

Yuki started to ask an obvious question or three, but the first syllable morphed into an abrupt yodel of panic as Ryou leaned his weight forward, touched heel to flank, and sent the well-trained Aangad shooting off, almost instantly into a rough canter and then a dead gallop away from the jaws of the trap that’d been waiting for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been busy writing this week and haven't been paying attention to the news, anything happening out there? 
> 
> Juuuust kidding... This chapter is a bit rough around the edges, I didn't take a lot of time to polish it, please report any typos or sentences that don't make sense. As for next chapter, it's going to be delayed a week, as I've written very little of it beyond planning it out. We're nearing the end but I haven't gotten enough material yet to decide whether there is one more long chapter, or two short ones. I'll put an update in my Dreamwidth account if there's going to be any longer delays. In the meantime....Zen........


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter written under the influence of the music 'Imperator Rex Graecorum' by the group Subway to Sally, which makes a good audio backdrop if you like your music on the heavy side.
> 
> (Correction: it turns out that a veteran legionary is an Evocatus (pl. Evocati), not Avocatus. Serves me right for not double checking my latin *grumbles and goes to fix previous chapter*)

Hooves thundered down the path the donkey train had previously taken, eating up in a matter of minutes what had taken half an hour to travel going in the other direction. Ryou knew he was heading the wrong way, back instead of forward, but when ‘forward’ came with a side of Roman cavalry and mounted archers, ‘back’ was really the only option. If memory served- there, over there; a faint dimple of a side road leading out of the snaking arroyo of rocks and scree slopes they’d been moving through. Please, let it not be a dead end…

Aangad pounded up a slope of light gray rock and burst out onto a plateau bathed in weak sunshine flecked with dust. Ryou slowed him with a pull of the reins and looked around quickly. Damn, Sekurnalis was a very unfriendly region for escapees, composed as it was of plains broken into sections by cracks and shallow canyons, some impassable to horse and carriage, but not necessarily deep enough to hide in either. Over to their right, a series of huge pockmarks reminded Ryou of the surface of the moon… Could that be…? They were close, spatially speaking, to the borderlands here, that anomalous shifting region created by repeated copying of the real world into the malleable fabric of the Outlands, but each snapshot imperfect, broken, as if decades had passed for them inside a pocket of time only the length of a minute to outside observers. Time for mailboxes to rust, for walls to fall, for houses to gather dust and eventually wear and collapse. The copies that survived began a long slow march through the spiral, further beaten down by weather, then dismantled and dug up by scavengers hunting for trophies from another world amongst the ruins. Those pockmarks could be what was left of a small village once everything else was removed. The place was a pitfall, and there might still be scavengers of dubious alliance poking around. Ryou swept the rest of the empty landscape with a critical eye. Flater, emptier, definitely safer, but the problem was, there was sure a lot of it… He had only the roughest idea of where to go as it were, how was he-

A shout behind him and to his left. Damn it!

Ryou kicked Aangad into motion without pause or hesitation. Only when the gallop was strong and smooth did he glance over his shoulder in the direction that sudden holler had come from. Behind his close-up view of Yuki’s pale and worried face, he spotted ten riders rounding an outcropping, hard in pursuit. Segmented mail shone dully over identical yellow tunics, short brown cloaks wound around shoulders and lower faces to protect from the dust. Legionaries. Centurion Paullus must have scattered a few squadrons around in case his quarry tried to flee. Ryou licked his lips, tension running through him. The soldiers rode in groups of two in perfect coordination, silent after that first shout. Roman soldiers did not laugh, threaten or rend the air with war cries, they prided themselves on cold-cut discipline on and off the field. They followed in that tight formation and in silence, uniform in stride, armor and intent; well trained and deadly. One rode a little off to one side, the decurion no doubt. The first two in line had bows in their hands and quivers tied to their saddles; a couple of the evocati. Only two as far as Ryou’s quick glance could establish. They wouldn’t be that much of a threat if Ryou had a phalanx of Hounds with him, but since he was alone with his brother, both of them unarmored… The Roman cavalry was extremely disciplined, nobody was going to charge ahead and block the evocati’s draw, they could fire their arrows straight at the fugitives’ backs once they got a little closer, or else shoot down Ryou’s horse.

Ryou made his way towards the pockmarked area at a dead run. Sure, it looked like a deadly trap for hooves, but if this was the remnants of a village, then it would be crisscrossed by old roads which would hopefully be somewhat smoother. Either way, putting up obstacles between them would hopefully slow the pursuers down and string out their formation, which could only be to Ryou’s advantage. Stay on the flats and they’d just run him down sooner or later. 

The landscape, jumbled into snapshots by the wild ride, took shape in Ryou’s perception in bits and pieces. Yes, these were once roads here, but gaping holes where there’d once been manhole covers made it barely more passable than the ruins of old homes around them, gaping traps for hooves. Ryou was forced to slow Aangad down to a hard canter. The first two hundred meters were alright, but what had once been an avenue crossed their path up ahead, now collapsed right down the middle where, presumably sewage and electrical lines had cored it. 

“Yuki! Hold on tight!”

Yuki’s hold around his waist, jarred at every step they took, turned into a stranglehold, and Aangad went sailing over the gap. 

That was one obstacle defeated, but there were many more up ahead. No wonder the Romans were only following at an easy lope; they were waiting for their prey to corner themselves in this land of pitfalls, and have no choice but to come quietly or face a couple of arrows. 

They thought they were chasing ordinary prey armed with ordinary means, they hadn’t gotten that last memo on the subject....

The village had once bordered a river carving its way through the landscape up ahead - or maybe it was a canal, or even an old highway that had collapsed, asphalt and tar crumbling away to leave a straight wide gap. A bridge reared up ahead, old and ruined but hopefully still passable. Ryou directed Aangad towards it. Behind him the cavalry followed, still too far for an adjusted shot and Ryou had to keep it that way. The pursuers were in no hurry to break their mares’ legs. Even if Ryou crossed the bridge, they could follow and hound him down once they were back on the plains. A horse with two riders would eventually tire and flag, though in this instance that would take awhile. Aangad surged forward, putting fearsome speed into his canter along the old road tumbled with debris and gaping with holes. Brave heart that he was, he neither shied nor stumbled. Darius gave him to me on a feast day to bring me good fortune and that sure worked out, was the half-meaningless thought that skittered through Ryou’s mind as he played spotter and steered his horse away from any large hole up ahead.

Finally the bridge was under their hooves. The clop of Aangad’s pace sounded strange against weathered cement which had crumbled in sections to reveal bones of rebar and girders beneath. The cavalry was some distance away, they’d been equally slowed by the outskirts of the ruined village, and were in no great hurry.

Their mistake.

Ryou pulled Aangad up as soon as his hooves bit into the dust of Sekurnalis’ plain again. A tug of the reins pulled the horse half around, and brought Ryou’s gaze to bear on the bridge. It was only one lane wide, perhaps it’d been meant for pedestrians a long time ago. Fortunately it wasn’t too big for what Ryou intended.

“What… what are we…” Yuki was struggling to catch his breath and ask his question. 

The answer came, loud and shocking in its suddenness as a slice of the bridge a meter wide, a rectangle running from side to side including the rusty remains of old handrails, suddenly detached itself and fell ponderously down into the gaping hole of the one-time canal, raising a cloud of light grey dust.

The bridge now sported a one meter gap across it, but that might still be jumped. Ryou bit his lower lip, eyes fleeting from the bridge to the distant cavalry unit and back again. He had a minute, he decided, picking a new spot across the bridge’s span.

What he was doing wasn’t easy, but it was an extension of the same ability that created Paths and other dimensional phenomena, the basis of most ‘magic’ in a magian’s arsenal. Under his focus, the fabric of reality bunched up into a higher dimension so that Ryou could slit a hole into it. In the controlled circumstances of a Per Gathas crossing, this could lead him somewhere he wanted to go, but the aim here wasn’t travel. The queer Path he created lead nowhere, instead it looped savagely into itself, a flattened torus in a higher dimension, so tight it turned on the width of a hair. The matter of the bridge impacted into itself, like a car rear ending its own bumper due to the strange effect of n-dimensional geometry folding up the classic Euclidian one. Concrete smashed and crunched at the molecular level, turned to dust, only a few microns in width and only for a second but when the effect ceased, the place where it had occurred was cut as neatly as if the concrete and metal rebars were cheese under a tungsten wire. For a perilous heartbeat or two, nothing happened, and then the sectioned chunk fell, a sideways slice showing a crossection of bridge anatomy, concrete, rebar, even the rusty remains of old handrails all sliced perfectly flat. It tumbled down into the gap where it crashed into the ground and the remains of the previous wreckage. 

Two meters, was that enough to slow down pursuers? Or should he-

As if to answer the question, the poor old bridge, already on its last legs, gave a frightening crunching cry, a sound of stressed concrete coming from the base of one of its pillars, and started to sag near where Ryou had cut it, pieces breaking away with small cascades of dust and debris, rebar twisting. 

Good enough, the Romans would have to be suicidal to put a foot on that. 

“What - why - how- did _you_ -”

Ignoring Yuki’s incoherent questions, Ryou spun Aangad around. The bridge was now impassable, but the legionaries were still coming and the two evocati could easily lob some arrows their way if they got too near. In theory Ryou could use the same technique - creating a Path between himself and the archers - to make arrows disappear, like he’d seen Andrap do with a bunch of stone cranes almost two years ago. But though Ryou had been practicing hard and had a rather impressive grasp of his talents according to Haaskoning, he knew his own limitations; he could mess around with dimensions just fine, but not at the drop of a hat, he needed a bit of concentration, and he certainly did not want to bet his and Yuki’s lives on his ability to whip out and apply his skills in the time it took for an arrow to leave a recurve bow and bury itself in his chest. The best strategy now was to get far away, and hope there was no easy way of crossing the canal that his pursuers could take to catch up again.

Of course, Ryou could have handled the situation very differently: he could have hidden behind a strew of wreckage nearby and waited for the men to cross the bridge before he removed that section right under their hooves. Or if he didn't mind getting messy, he could have created that torus of a Path right through their bodies. That would guarantee no more pursuers. The thought had crossed his mind only to be dismissed. The Romans might not deserve his mercy, but Ryou had not yet killed in the Outlands despite being adjacent to a lot of violence and death. He was not going to start today of all days with his civilized doctor of a brother as witness, not unless both their lives were in danger.

Aangad had fallen back into a canter. Ryou was pacing him instinctively, as if Darius was ahead of him on Barezahi. The stray thought brought along a sudden ache of longing and worry; he wished he believed enough in Inder to pray to Him to see his lover again. But if the Romans found some other passage- or if others cornered them and fired a volley of-

A weird itchy feeling crawled inside Ryou’s skull, and then a sudden sharp headache coincided with a massive _shift_ in the higher dimensions. 

Aangad nearly sat back on his heels as Ryou, panicking, pulled hard on the reins. _What was that?!_

As if in answer, lightning tumbled out of the washed-out sunny sky and struck a couple of kilometres away with a sound like silk ripping. A second later a tremendous bang rolled across the plains, and at the same time a voice echoed out of nowhere: “Take that, you bastard!”

Diya! That’d been- “Diya?!”

Oh, right, voice projection - shortening distances by bypassing them in the higher dimensions, he’d done it before at Terentius’ funeral. “Diya? Are you okay?”

“Ryou!” Her voice echoed around his head in a dizzying effect like wind chimes. “Follow the beacon! We’re fine,” she added as a scornful afterthought. Ryou had the distinct impression a few disciples of the Ancients were having a very bad day.

Good, if she’d caught up with the Atenites, then they wouldn’t be helping the legionaries corner him. Now, what was that about a beacon?

Ryou cast around with his senses - and ahead of them and to their left a few miles away, a brilliant effect took shape in the upper spheres like a sparkler the size of a building. A beacon- the inn! Someone was marking the location of the Per Gathas crossing for him. He’d be able to travel to the borderlands from there. He was ready to bet they’d be ready for him when he arrived. And if not, well, from the border sanctuary he could break through into the next dimension himself if he had to, it was right next door. 

A medley of voices from the Per Gathas almost blotted out Yuki’s tentative, “Er, who are you talking to?” 

“Diya. Never mind, just hang on.”

Yuki renewed his grip and Ryou whipped the reins. The beacon was somewhere on the other side of the canal he’d just crossed, because of course it was. He thundered along its edges, hoping he’d find another passage somewhere, and that the troops that’d been following him through the village would not be waiting on the other side. They’d be on his tracks sooner or later, but he should be able to outrun them long enough to get to his goal. The peaceful donkey train had only been a couple of hours away from their destination when they’d been stopped earlier. Aangad could make that distance in under twenty minutes. Ryou was familiar with this sanctuary; he’d stayed there with Darius and Moennathin a year ago on his way to visit Tokyo. It was a small rarely used crossing since it led to no other region than the borderlands, travel to which was restricted. The borderlands were close already, so close Ryou could almost feel them in the barely-living dirt around them, the shifting gray sands. But he still could not safely rip his way from here to there without the spatial instability of a Per Gathas Path over a river. If he tried, he’d just as likely end up in the Broken Lands again, and he couldn’t afford to lose his way now. He had to get his brother home. ‘Wanted for questioning by Rome-’ over Ryou’s dead body!

Aangad was starting to snort on every lunge forward, but his stride was smooth. The war horse worth a king’s ransom was showing his mettle. Even with two riders on his back, he’d hold the distance. No sign of the troops they’d left near the bridge, but in the distance a large plume of dust rose in the still air. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was some more of the Romans, perhaps their main force heading towards the borderlands crossing as well. He had to beat them to it. Oh! There! A dip in the dusty plains leading down to an area where he could cross the large ditch. 

After that it was a straight line to the beacon. He kept Aangad’s nose pointed towards it while his gaze swept the horizon and his ears parsed a fight happening some unknown distance away. 

“Oh, you’re a fighter, aren’t you,” he heard Diya say, as arch as a cat toying with a mouse.

A flash in the higher spheres like a bolt of light splitting an eternal night.

“Go-”

“Honored one! Be careful!”

“Oh please.” Another crack of lightning. How was she doing that? And could Ryou somehow learn that trick in the next five minutes…?

A crevasse bordered by the carcass of long-dead trees forced him to detour and lose a few minutes. He walked Aaangad to give him a quick break and find his wind, but the widening cloud of dust to his left curtailed any chance of a real reprieve. He picked up the canter again. 

“They’re breaking- they’re running!” someone exclaimed in the higher spheres.

Oh good, one less thing to worry about. 

“Careful!”

“This one is dead.”

“This one too. One got away.” That was Andrap’s voice. “An acolyte.” 

“Do you need help?” Diya asked crisply.

“No, I am in pursuit.” 

“Be careful-”

Ryou tuned out the voices. Sounded like Diya and her group were safe. Ryou, for his part…

Aangad snorted a warning, bringing Ryou’s attention fully back to their course. The ground pitched downward at a faint slant, and a hundred meters up ahead Ryou spotted a faint hint of a track that did not seem beholden to nature; too straight. An old trail worn by hooves heading to where the beacon’s light scintillated in the eyes of any magian around. Good, almost there… Ryou heeled Aangad to run towards the road at an intersect course. He couldn’t yet see the stelea of the border crossing because the slant of the ground pitched higher to his left, hiding his goal behind a gentle curve, but it was surely only a few minutes away.

Ryou rounded the obstacle and reined Aangad in hard. 

A hundred meters up ahead, ten men turned to look right at him. Six were on horseback, grouped together as if they’d been talking, two riders on the outskirts had been keeping a lookout, the last two were dismounted, one checking something in his saddlebag and another, from his posture, was peeing against a big gray boulder.

They stood frozen in surprise for only a short moment, then a shout from one of the lookouts brought all of them into a formation that was only ragged for about a minute, the man who’d been urinating the last to find his stirrups, hoist himself into his saddle and get to his place in the line. No archers, but they all had throwing javelins in holsters hanging from their saddles. Not that they needed them, numbers alone were not in Ryou’s favor. Some twenty meters behind them, a large ring of stelae fenced off an area the size of Sura’s largest courtyard. A small house sat in the middle, built without much conviction from the same gray stone that made up most of the countryside. An additional uncovered enclosure held what Ryou remembered to be a couple of goats, though he was a bit far to make them out in detail. That, the Per Gathas crossing, was his objective, and the Romans were stationed between it and him.

Well shit.

It was to be expected, really. P. Paulus was a centurion after all; that signified a baseline grasp of tactics at the very least. Roma Praetorium was at present a meritocracy. Imperator Cassianus himself was born from middle-of-the-road nobility; he had acceded to high rank and then the throne by impressing Galeo The Older enough that the latter had disinherited his own sons for this new ambitious one he’d adopted. The rhapsodes of Leyam’s court loved to tell stories of Roma Praetorium from previous centuries when their empire had descended into decadence, revolution or the entertaining madness due to inbreeding. The tides of history had washed away many an empire that had fallen prey to those same ills, but here in the Outlands they were spared the kind of pressures that had taken down their Inland counterpart; there were no barbarian hordes to invade them, plagues came and then went again, the large empire would collapse around the edges and shake to the core but always rebuilt itself eventually in cycles spanning centuries, and they were at their peak in this current one. Today, P. Livius Paullus, though clearly born in a protectorate like Messene - a country bumpkin as far as purebred romans were concerned - had nonetheless risen to high rank in the army and in the confidence of his Legate and the Atenites. Of course he’d think to put troops between his prey and the mousehole through which they would try to escape.

A gesture from the decurion sent the single line of riders to spread out a little more, but they were not advancing yet. They were waiting to see what Ryou would do. If they charged at him, he might be able to maneuver around them on his war horse and make for the border crossing. But at his back, the plume of dust was growing thicker. The main troop was approaching. These soldiers knew Ryou was running out of options and their job was to keep him where he was so that the jaws of the trap would close on him neatly. 

Ryou clicked his tongue. Aangad, ears twitching wildly but without any sign of hesitation or timidity, started to clop his way towards the formation ahead. 

Eighty meters away, Ryou could make out the decurion’s face, the frown settling there. He didn’t hear the order but there must have been one, because in near perfect unison every soldier reached down, grabbed the shaft of their short javelins, pulled them from their holsters and drew back into a throwing position. They were still too far away to cast, but the threat was clear. Stay where you are, don’t be stupid. One unarmed and unarmored man couldn’t run that gauntlet or he’d end up looking like a sieve.

That was only true for a run-of-the-mill fugitive. Ryou had a few tricks up his sleeve. The length of their lines meant he couldn’t hit more than a couple at a time with a dimensional warping ability, and he still wanted to avoid bloodshed if at all possible, but one solution to the conundrum leapt to mind. He just had to hope his brother had some of that ibuprofen left, because this was one of those headache-inducing ones...

“Yuki, hang on tight and don’t be scared.”

“What?”

Ryou reached out with his mind and _twisted._

A shimmer appeared between the Romans and himself, then there was a zooming effect.

And instead of empty space, a vision of horror.

Boulders the size of trucks moved through the air straight towards the legionaries, tumbling over and over each other. Two collided and spun together sideways in silence highlighted by the faint keen of the blowing wind. Among the rocks, a long tapered tube cartwheeled slowly like a mammoth tree trunk turning in a tornado. Frightening enough, but if the soldiers stopped panicking about that, then the creatures living among the debris tumbling towards them would make an even greater impact. A wrinkled yellow sphere the size of a beach ball covered in prickles bounced towards them, followed by another, and another, and then a dozen more. Worse maybe was the smaller specimens clinging to the flying boulders or else tumbling free. So many of them! Obviously organic, alien but alive; no eyes or faces or mouths or anything recognizable, bodies nothing more than stubby tubes, wild growths at the end moving like nests of pale snakes or a mess of transparent tubing. Most were the size of a fist, a couple larger than a human head - there’d be many too small to see too. 

The Romans took one look at what was coming at them like an avalanche, and panicked.

Ryou grimaced, holding on hard to the dimensional folding. 

_”What the hell is that!?_ It looks like- it looks-... it looks like particles, actually,” Yuki finished in a somewhat calmer voice, a contrast to the panicked screams up ahead. He was a child of the 21st century, of scientific advancement and certainties, of unbounded imagination, television and CGI. And also, of course, he’d guessed his brother was the one responsible for the phenomenon and probably knew what he was doing.

“Yeah. Microscoping effect,” Ryou grunted through the pressure headache as he heeled a fidgety Aangad to detour around the area. 

Yuki gasped, this time in understanding.

Ryou had had a lot of time to sharpen his mathematical abilities this last year; carefully, of course. He’d visited Asha Mainyu several times as well. This usage of dimensional folding (which the Per Gathas of his acquaintance persisted in calling a ‘spell’ even when Ryou asked them not to) was his own invention. As far as he knew, nobody else in the Per Gathas had thought to use their powers in quite this way before, understandably as the majority had no idea what a microscope even was and how alien the resulting view could be. Familiar with the math and physics behind refraction - and with his own glasses to give him a hint - Ryou had found a way of curving space in the right way to create a lens effect. In the area between him and the troops, he’d warped a section of their current plane by immersing it and twisting in via the higher dimension; not creating any hole or Path, just bending it like putty. Stacked one on top of each other, these interferences amplified the section hundreds of times, so that the scene - a puff of air, a drift of the dust raised by Aangad’s hooves - was hugely magnified. Silicate particles tumbled like boulders in an avalanche, that long tube was perhaps a horse hair - and Ryou was surprised by the amount of pollen in the sample, seeing the barrenness of the landscape. The soil bacteria present, perfectly harmless, were the stars of the show, of course; they might still be tiny with this magnification, but their numbers and alienness made up for that. All this would hold the horrified attention of his would-be attackers for a minute or two, until the more astute ones noticed that the avalanche of stones and monsters floating their way never actually reached them, became smaller and smaller the closer they got in an uncomfortable tumble-down effect until it was once more just a drift of dust on the wind blowing towards them.

Somebody behind him shouted, but too late. Ryou was already thundering past the first two stelae. An old man and a young woman with the flame symbols stitched on their crude brown tabards stood sentry on either side of the stone markers to remind any would-be trespassers that here indeed was sanctified ground. Even the might of Roma Praetorium and its emperor stopped where the Paths of Zoroaster began. 

But Ryou wouldn't put it past those legionaries to lob a few javelins at his back if he gave them time to recover, so he kept his horse heading straight towards a crack in the ground where a dusty trickle of water wound its way through, as much liquid as Sekurnalis could produce for a river. The Path started at the water’s edge and led to the borderlands, but that wasn’t good enough.

Ryou reached out for it and twisted, bending Euclidian space as well as the dimensions so that the newly hacked out Path would deposit them in that ruined playground a short walk away from the puncture wound that Ryou was pretty much using now as an exit hatch into and out of reality. 

“Really?” came the dry voice of Diya in his ears, sounding unsurprised.

“Not going to ride half a day to get to- get to Tokyo-” Ryou bit out against the movement of Aangad’s hard canter. “The Path- it drops us miles away from our destination-”

“You could have just waited at the border, we’d have been there eventually.”

“Not taking chances.”

“Fine, it’s not too badly-” 

Diya’s resigned words cut off abruptly as Ryou crossed into the borderlands. Ryou knew he was adding to the tab he was running with the Per Gathas, but he was not going to waste more time than needed, he wanted to get his brother back home _now_ , politeness and the rules be damned. Because the Romans by themselves might not be able to follow him here, but the Ancients still could. They used dangerous magic, more powerful on some fronts than the Per Gathas. They did not need a pre-carved Path to split dimensions and follow him. 

A familiar urban landscape took the place of Sekurnalis. The road beneath Aangad’s hooves was firm and uncracked, merely dusty and filled with mulch that might have once been dead leaves. The horse clattered forward under Ryou’s direction until they were in front of a familiar-looking manga shop half tumbled down into its own basement. 

“Here we are. Let’s get you down.”

He held Yuki’s elbow as his brother slid off Aangad, knees nearly buckling after the tension of that wild ride. Ryou quickly threw his leg over the saddle and dropped into the dirt to give Yuki some support.

“You’re okay, you’re fine.”

Yuki made a sound like “Buh.”

“You’ll be okay in a minute. Take a deep breath, we’re safe.” Sort of. “Let’s not waste time. It’s barely past dawn here, so in Tokyo it’ll probably be around, uh, 3 or 4AM I think. Hey, do you have your phone on you? Or was it in your tennis bag?”

Yuki looked at him in a walleyed way and, after Ryou repeated the question, patted his pocket. He eventually produced his cell from his jacket and looked blankly at it.

“Good, you can call a taxi once you get back.” 

“Right,” said Yuki with the faint pause of one who had to fish up the meaning of the word ‘taxi’ from a seriously jumbled set of thoughts.

Ryou clapped him on the shoulder, the gesture ending with a faint shove. “There. Walk straight ahead and you’ll be in Tokyo, right where we left.”

Yuki took a tottering step forward, relief flooding his expression, but then he stopped abruptly and turned back. 

“Ryou- “ he burst out, then, more quietly, already hopelessly… “Please come with me?”

“I can’t.”

“But…”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Fine…? Ryou, you…”

Yuki’s gaze scoured the deserted streets and worn walls as if the words he wanted to say were hiding there. He didn’t seem curious about where they were or why it looked like Tokyo after the apocalypse. He’d probably plumb run out of speculation, curiosity and wonder in the past three days.

“I… I know you’ll probably be fine. I mean, I just found out you can kick ass and do magic and-... and you’ve changed so much.”

Following his brother’s vague gesture, Ryou looked down at himself, but he didn’t think Yuki was referring to his tunic, split riding skirt, wide leather belt and hardy boots. 

“The way you walk, and talk, and smile-... I… I can see you’re happy, happier than you’ve ever been.” The words were embarrassing him from the way he avoided meeting Ryou’s eyes. “I never realized how much the person you were before was this- this suppressed locked-in version of you. I… I am happy for you, even though, I mean, it took _this_ to get you out of that shell.” The hand Yuki waved all around the wasteland ended up massaging his forehead. “I’m going to need so much therapy for this and I won’t be able to get it since nobody will believe me...” 

“We’re good at suppressing, we Ujiies. If not… just make something up - I joined a gang or something - and the psychiatrist will attribute anything odd you say to the fantasy books you read.”

“I don’t read fantasy books.”

“I suggest you start, it’ll come in handy if you ever let anything slip,” said Ryou dryly. “Yuki, I-...”

The brothers looked at each other. Seconds were ticking by, but-...

“I’m… I know this is where you belong now, is what I’m saying,” his brother admitted, words heavy and dull. “I’m just scared. Once I’m gone - if what you said is true - then I’ll never know. I know you’re doing well now, but what about, what about next year, and the year after that? You could-... something could happen to you, you could get sick - or hurt or -... and we’d never even know…”

“Yuki, I can’t lie, I’ll be in some danger, but I can handle it. And I… I will try to get in touch with you. I’ll need to bargain for this, hard, and you’ll have to promise never to tell anyone about it, but I will try to find a way to let you know I’m doing well on a yearly basis. Just, you know, check your email regularly for messages from unknown senders with strange subjects, or if someone you don’t know approaches you in the street, be ready to listen rather than pressing on, they might have a message from me. I’ll figure it out. I’ll do my damndest to figure it out.” 

His hand was grasping his brother’s. He didn’t even remember reaching out. He squeezed the fingers in his, and then released them, tilting his chin.

“Now go.”

A dozen different words of brotherhood and family visibly fought through the familiar pinch of the lips that came from being a Ujiie. In the end Yuki just said, “I’ll damn well hold you to that, and in the meantime, take care. I won’t say anything to mother and father, that’ll just be way too complicated. But if- when I hear from you, I’ll let drop that much so they also know you’re, uh, you’re alright.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“Good luck. Bye.” Yuki seemed half dazed at the inadequacy of his leave-taking, but what was there to say? He turned like an automaton and walked straight ahead. 

Ryou reached out, gently touched the scar of his back-and-forths between here and the road near the manga shop. It opened for him without much fuss, invisible to the normal eye, but a Path from here to the real Tokyo where life was, on the whole, a good deal safer.

“Bye, Yuki. Thanks for everything.”

That got him a vague wave over Yuki’s shoulder, and then he was gone.

Ryou closed the puncture once more, after which he turned to walk absently down the street, leading Aangad by the reins. He should be doing something, but he wasn’t even sure what. His head hurt a bit after all the effort earlier, so did his heart, a melancholy ache for something that had to be left behind… But this was unlike him. Time to pull yourself together, Ryou. What was he supposed to do now? Follow his Path back to Sekurnalis? He’d arrive in the middle of the sanctuary of stelae, he’d be safe from the Romans, probably safe from whatever was left of the Ancients too. Or should he just wait here for Diya to come fetch him? Avoid making any further dimensional messes or mistakes-

Aangad’s head jerked up with a harsh snort of alarm. 

It was the only warning Ryou got, but it saved his life; his attacker’s sandals had made almost no noise in the thick dust of the borderlands, advancing cautiously while Ryou was woolgathering and catching him dead to rights. Ryou didn’t see much, a figure darting towards him, that was all, but the unexpectedness of it and Aangad’s alarm had him jumping aside on instinct, and the knife stabbed only the air where he’d been standing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-ta-taaaaa. Okay, sorry for the cliffhanger, but this chapter was too long to not cut in two, and the final stretch still needs a bit of work. It should be out next week!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, 2020 decided to repeatedly wind up and punch me in the head. But in good news, Outlands now has COVER ART! Created with my own two sweaty little mitts, I posted it in the first chapter of the first arc. I’m hoping to eventually make cover art for all the arcs because I am a masochist.

A crack in the concrete caught Ryou’s boot as he dodged. He stumbled, pulling Aangad’s reins down sharply. The war horse tried to rear and then twisted into a buck. Hooves rang against the road. 

Where?! Where was his attacker?! Ryou made a grab at his horse’s strong neck to steady himself and protect his side. Could it be a border crosser? Normally those plunderers struck in groups- there!

A figure hovered just out of reach of Aangad’s kicking range, eyes darting from Ryou to the horse and back again. Someone small- a kid?

The boy took a step back, getting a little further from Aangad’s deadly hooves, and turned burning kohl-lined eyes on Ryou. He wore typical Atenite gear, Ryou had seen the likes in conquered Hellias: an acolyte’s white tunic, sandals, pectoral necklace made of beaten bronze with the sun disk picked out in semi-precious stones, head shaved other than a top knot- wait-

“It’s you.” Ryou put his hand on Aangad’s nose, trying to calm him. “You’re that kid - the boy who was with Menka-... uh, your master in the Void.” Ten-year old features had matured to twelve, but were still recognizable (it helped that Ryou still had the occasional nightmare about his trip out of reality, following that kid bouncing up a steep set of stone stairs that disappeared behind them leaving nothing but an abyss…) 

Sooty dark eyes narrowed dangerously. He was holding a dagger the length of three fingers in the shape of a palm frond, the handle a bit too large for him. It didn’t look serious in a child’s grasp, though that was probably a dangerous misapprehension. 

Ryou himself did not have a weapon other than his table knife and his abilities, and unlike the Romans, he and this adversary were on equal footing where those were concerned. Ryou was now facing an Ancient, albeit one that hadn’t yet conquered puberty. 

The boy took two steps sideways as if looking for a trajectory that could get him to Ryou without going nearer the large horse than he had to. He’d grown in the past two years, but he was still a head shorter than Ryou; if he was standing next to the war steed, he’d not be able to see over the saddle. 

Tension ran through the boy as he took two more steps to the side. His eyes were wide beneath the makeup, he looked beyond furious and also about to cry. 

“Kid-” Ryou said warningly.

The word set him off. The boy leapt at Ryou, knife held out as he came in sideways. 

Aangad whinnied harsh and loud, stamping once. The kid leapt away again. His lips pinched, his face white with fury as well as fear. Then his pose shifted, his shoulders went back, he planted his feet, stuck up his chin and lifted a fist.

Why do they always do that, wave their hands about, gestures are really unnecessary, was the thought at the very, very back of Ryou’s mind while most of his concentration leapt out to the thin fabric of reality that made up the borderlands. 

He felt it instantly: a pucker of a higher dimensional intrusion forcing its way into their current plane, a thin mangled start of a Path the size and width of a sword forming right in front of him. 

Ryou didn't know if the kid was attempting to conjure a monster or just aiming to rip Ryou in half, and he wasn’t going to find out. This was something Zabessa and Andrap had trained him for. His mind’s power engulfed the burgeoning effect and quashed it. If the kid had been metaphorically trying to bunch up the fabric of reality in order to thread through a needle or a knife, then Ryou had just given the entire bolt of cloth one massive shake and straightened it out. 

The boy didn’t seem surprised, just really angry, the insensate fury of a child. “You!” 

“Calm down.” Ryou spoke steadily, rationally, hoping that would do the trick.

The boy gave an inarticulate yell and gestured again. Ryou had never been all that good with children…

This time it wasn’t one long tear but dozens of little holes that were pinpricking reality. The kid was trying to set him on fire or something! 

The effect was too widespread to easily banish, so Ryou ripped open a small Path right over the kid’s head and connected it to the other Path he’d created not fifteen minutes ago, more particularly to an area that contained that trickle of a river he’d recently crossed. About a bucket’s worth fell out of the sky and splashed over the brat. It was perfectly safe for the boy, and disrupted his concentration. The pricking effect, some of which had been riddling Ryou’s very body, immediately ceased before anything dire could come of it. 

“Stop that _right now!”_ Ryou barked, hopefully hitting the register Darius used on new army recruits.

The kid staggered back, wiping water from his eyes. The kohl smeared over half his face, strands of the top knot had come loose from its tie. 

“I’m going to kill you!” he screamed. 

That’s what he said, but he wasn’t coming nearer or flinging his hand about anymore, and Ryou instinctively felt that having him shouting about it reduced the chances of anything happening, taking the confrontation back from outright attack to mere threats.

“What did I ever do to you?”

“You killed my master!”

“What?! Of course I didn’t! Besides, your master attacked _me_ , if anyone should be angry- not that I was the one who killed him anyway-”

“They killed him because of you! He died because of you!”

“That’s hardly my fault. Shh,” Ryou added for Aangad’s benefit. The horse was stamping and whickering, upset by the shouts and the rampant tension. 

“You-... You-... I should have my name by now!” The boy jerked his knife around like he wished the air was Ryou’s punctured corpse. “I was his heir! I was in the shadow of _Gods!_ But you killed him and now I’m nothing! I’m just a dirt-realm acolyte again! I have to start all over again! Because of YOU!”

“I repeat, that’s hardly my-”

“Why can't we kill you?! Why won’t you die?! We tried to kill you again and again! The Assyrians protect you, the Per Gathas protect you - it’s not FAIR!” 

Good grief, it was like talking to a teenage Yuki all over again. 

“You’re not even one of them!” The kid actually stamped his foot, which was something Ryou had never seen done outside of books and manga. He wondered if the boy was about to throw himself on the ground and have a tantrum. “Why do they protect you?! They don’t control you! You’re free! How do you get to be free?! How do you get everything?! You never earned it! I served four years under my master! You never earned anything! You were never forced to _choose!_ It’s like- you don’t follow the rules and nobody cares! The laws don’t apply to you! You have _cheat codes!_ ”

“Look, boy, I-... what did you say?”

The boy up and hurled the knife at Ryou out of sheer frustration. It wasn’t a throwing knife, it tumbled through the air like a stick and thunked into the ground a couple of feet away from him. “I hate you! I’ll never get back to The Divine Realms because of you! I-”

Ryou dropped Aangad’s reins and crossed the distance between them in ten long strides.

The boy gasped and scurried back, but he couldn’t dodge Ryou’s longer reach. A hand fastened on his wrist. 

“What did you say?!”

The kid boggled at Ryou, fear and anger warring over his expression. “Let me go!”

“What did you say?! About cheat codes?! How do you know- what did you mean by that?!”

Having an adult shout in his face cowed the boy a fraction, but not much. He kneed Ryou, but the kid was built like a magian, not a fighter, and Ryou had practiced against Darius for two years. He instinctively twisted to take the blow on his hip and minimize the damage, light as it was. 

“Tell me!” 

“What- what -” 

“What did you mean by cheat codes?!” 

Fear was slowly gaining the upper hand, the child’s lips trembled. “You cheat, it means you cheat.” 

Ryou forced himself not to shake him. “But you said cheat codes. You know those words? What they mean?”

“Uh, yeah, you, er, cheat. At games. Let me go!” It was more a plea disguised as anger now. “Let me go, I have a- a new master now. Let me go or he’ll hunt you down and- and-”

“I cheat at games.” Ryou scrutinized the boy’s face and found nothing there but anxiety and blank incomprehension. “You… you heard that somewhere, didn’t you. You don’t know what it really means, but someone you know used that expression and gave you a rough explanation. Who?!”

Now the fear became acute, eyes widening in comprehension. “I- I- nobody! Let me _go!”_

“Who told you about-”

They both tensed and looked around, feeling it at the same time: a displacement nearby, starting _somewhere else_ and ending a block away at the spot where Ryou’s Path had brought him. 

Ryou blew out a breath in sheer relief. It could have been anyone or anything, from Romans and Ancients to monsters defying the imagination, but fortunately it was just Diya and a small handful of Per Gathas, those who were actually magian and not the escort or servants. They must have reached the sanctuary of stelae and followed him through. Diya had her ‘I’m going to be annoyed about something’ look on her face, Ryou could see it all the way from where he stood, and he never thought he’d be so glad to see that particular expression again. 

The boy gave an inchoate cry of raw fear and jerked against Ryou’s hold. 

It was a reaction of such sheer panic that Ryou took a second glance to make sure that yes, it was Diya coming over here with Andrap, Moennathin and two others in tow, not any horrible monster.

“Calm down, it’s just my friends, they-” Ryou got pulled back a step as the boy started fighting his hold like a hare in a noose.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Calm down! They won’t hurt you!”

“Let me GO!”

Ryou held on tight. For the love of- it was just Diya, who might have a temper but also a motherly streak a mile wide. She’d noticed he wasn’t alone. Her steps slowed - Ryou could barely see from the way the kid was kicking and jerking at his arm - and there was an expression on her face… more concern than surprise… Andrap and Moennathin, on the other hand, accelerated right on by her, eyes intent on the boy.

“Let me go! Please! I-” The teen burst into large hysterical sobs, sudden and shocking. “I don’t want to die!”

“They’re not… they’re not going to hurt you.”

The kid jerked, more feebly now, too panicked to try anything other than pulling helplessly against Ryou’s hold, eyes fixed on the advancing Per Gathas. 

The words ‘cheat codes’ still marched around Ryou’s thoughts, scaring a bunch of conclusions ahead of them. This child knew something, Ryou could feel it, he could almost feel the shape of it, but he needed the boy to calm down, trust him, answer his questions. If the boy would only calm down and explain where he’d heard those words, Ryou was sure he would get an answer that would sort out a lot of what was going on in the Outlands since his arrival. Now that would be a prize worth bringing back to the Per Gathas. Get him instantly out of their bad books. More than that: not five minutes after seeing his brother for possibly the last time, here was the bargaining chip that might give Ryou the leverage to allow him to contact Yuki on a yearly basis. It could also land a fatal blow on the enemy that’d been hounding him from the shadows all these years and who’d injured Darius. 

But…

But Ryou was holding on to a sobbing twelve year old who’d half collapsed in the dirt, kohl running down his cheeks as he stared helplessly at the implacable approach of Andrap and Moennathin. Diya still trailed them. She looked troubled and sad.

Instincts stirred, doubt ate his resolve. Yuki had said Ryou had changed, and he had, but he had not and would never change that much...

Ryou let the child’s wrist slip from his fingers with a quick, “Run.”

The boy fell on broken concrete with a gasping sob, sat there stock still for a second, then scrambled to his feet and dashed off. Ryou turned. Moennathin slowed his steps, but Andrap broke into a sprint, hand lifting. Ryou didn’t exactly interpose himself between the boy and the approaching magian, but neither did he move out of the way. 

Then a feeling of displacement made Ryou spin around to find that the boy had vanished. Without the aid of a Path or- how had he done that? Ryou felt suddenly sick to his stomach. Shit, maybe he shouldn’t have let him run off. He’d let the boy’s fear erode his reasoning, but he hadn’t realized the kid would do that, risk a jump from here to- to who knew where. He could be - he could be lost in the Broken Lands, or beyond the Chasm, or- Ryou should have held on and protected him. What had the boy been so afraid of anyway?

Andrap ran past Ryou while the latter was still staring, aghast, at the blank bit of space where the boy had vanished. 

“Leave off, he’s not worth it,” Diya said loudly behind them.

Andrap took two more steps and then stopped, scowling. The look on his face attenuated Ryou’s remorse somewhat. That did not look like a man who’d been planning to give a child a stern lecture and then leave it at that. 

“What were you going to do if you caught him?” he had to ask, trying not to bristle before he had all the facts.

Andrap’s only answer was a shrug.

Ryou turned a growing frown on the rest of the approaching magian. “Diya? What were you planning on doing to him? He was just a kid. He can’t have been more than twelve.”

“I know,” Diya said simply. “I suppose it’s no big deal that he got away then.”

Andrap and a couple of the Per Gathas behind her looked like they disagreed, but didn’t dare do so out loud.

“But what-”

“The Mark of Amun. You’ve heard of it? The thing Ancients do to their disciples?”

Ryou was left racking his memories of a long-ago abduction. “...I’ve heard the term, but I don’t know what it does.”

“It’s a connection between master and disciples.” Diya scowled, arms crossed over her round belly and eyes on the space where the boy had vanished. “Well, let’s not put a fine point on it, it’s a leash. The masters who ascend to their bloody castles in the sky would be helpless if they didn’t have a bevy of gofers to do their bidding here on earth, and bring them food, books, news, all that. So they impose this Mark on them, a condition of their apprenticeship. They spin it to sound like a blessing, a sign of their protection from the monsters and gods they think inhabit the realms, and it does allow their disciples to find the pocket dimensions of their masters and move there easily - like a guideline if you will.”

Ryou glanced back at the empty space in relief. So that’s what had happened. Well, the previous master of the boy was dead, but he’d mentioned a new one, albeit one who didn’t consider him as highly as the first Ancient he’d served. So the kid was fine then...

“The link is used to see through their servants’ eyes at all times, spy on them. Ancients form cabals, you see, they’d love nothing more than to subvert each other’s servants otherwise. And because we could use this link to lead us to their lairs in the upper dimensions if we ever got our hands on the servants, the masters use the Mark to kill their gofers instantly if we ever capture them.”

Ryou’s jaw dropped.

Behind her grumpy expression, Diya looked uncomfortable, but she was the only one. Andrap, the two other Per Gathas, even Moennathin, they did not hesitate to meet Ryou’s gaze with every signs of a clear conscience or even a faint irritation that Ryou had let the enemy escape. They were all Outlanders, and most of them were from older societies such as the Pariya. Beyond the age of eight, children were not considered children anymore. ‘Teenager’ was quite a modern concept. For thousands of years and in most countries throughout history, a boy of twelve was just a man who was too young to know better, needed a mentor or a trade or a drill sergeant to keep him in line, but no more to be pitied than any other man under the sun, from raw beginner to veteran. Andrap visibly would have liked to remove one more soldier from the ranks of their ancient enemies before he could mature into a greater threat. 

“I take it your brother made it back safely?” Diya asked in the unpleasant silence (unpleasant mainly for Ryou.)

“Yes,” Ryou answered shortly.

“Good. Come on, then, let’s start our journey back.”

“...Is there really no way to break that link?” Ryou asked as they turned and walked back up the block of ruined Tokyo. He kept his voice low and for Diya’s ears only, feeling acutely the difference between being an Inlander and an Outlander right now. He didn’t need Andrap to sneer at him for his mercy.

“Not that we’ve found, no. It’s not easy to capture a magian in the first place, of course.” Diya pitched her voice low too, and Ryou thought she understood him, probably felt much the same way. “If we could catch one and not have the Mark trigger immediately, we might find a way of removing it.”

“You were fighting other Ancients by the sound of it.” Ryou’s voice sounded stiff and cold to his ears. “I take it you didn’t take them alive.”

Diya’s eyes didn't leave the street ahead. “Well, no.”

“I imagine that this Mark business makes it pointless to even try. So you don’t.”

“They fight like tigers,” Andrap said in sharp reproof from behind them. 

“Of course they do, with their backs to the wall,” Ryou shot back.

“That was their choice in the first place, to accept this- this travesty of a scheme for power they do not deserve, serving masters who care little for them and even less for the Great Design.” 

There wasn’t much to say to that, though Ryou remembered the kid throwing in his face ‘you were never forced to choose’. There was choice, and there was choice… If the choice was, climb the ranks of the Ancients or end up disposed of like refuse, then to most people it was no choice at all.

They marched on in silence for a while. It seemed to get heavier and heavier until Diya said in a low voice, too low for the others to hear: “At any rate, I’m glad you let that kid scamper off.”

Ryou felt a little relieved and vindicated.

“Though I would have loved to be able to ask him and the others some questions,” Diya added with a sigh. “This whole plan, bringing in the Romans like this…”

“Mixing melee and magic,” Ryou offered as she trailed off.

“Right. That goes against our, well, our unspoken conventions of this war we fight, it just-... I’d love to know who the hell thought of it and put it into motion so quickly.”

“I might have an idea about that.”

Diya looked at him sharply, weighed him in silence. Ryou didn’t elaborate, he was still angry at the others in the troop, and he needed to think about the implications of those two little words he’d heard, and all of this might be a conversation best held between two Inlanders only. Diya seemed to read his conclusions off his face, her expression became neutral and all she said was: “You may have found a way to pay us back for our help and leniency sooner rather than later. But let’s get you back home first.”

Home. Ryou looked back once at the empty space where his brother had taken his leave, but then he marched on quickly, so quickly that Diya gave an amused snort. Who was she to tease him on the subject? She’d spent the last two days muttering about how ‘Casper better be drinking those tonics like I told him’, and ‘I better not find out he ate too much red meat’ and ‘I hope those bastards on the council aren’t giving him a hard time while I’m away’. Ryou also had a strong person waiting for him at home, and home was where he needed to be as soon as possible. Questions and problems, enemies and Ancients, they could all wait for another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so can we. That’s the end of this arc, however writing this one has given me prickles of inspiration for the next one, which I’d aim to be the final one. Yep, that’s right, we’re finally seeing the end of Outlands! In a bit. All the arcs before this one had an outline done and pages written; for this one, I have only a few wisps of ideas. I do know that I’m hoping to change it up by situating most of the action in the jaws of the wolf, in Roma Praetorium itself. It’ll probably take me another year to write the next arc, but if you’re interested in preview reads, beta reads, cover art and maybe more, as well as ruminations on other original fics I’m contemplating, then keep an eye on my dreamwidth account or my brand new [Tumblr.](https://malchants.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I’m also posting Outlands in its entirety onto [RoyalRoad](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/38253/outlands), which is quite full of good original writing, great stories, many of which are in the sci-fi-fantasy-balls-to-the-walls-crazy category that I love. I’m taking advantage of this overhaul to tidy up some of the terminology and the ‘magic’ used in Outlands. It won’t change any of the story beats, just make it more congruous.
> 
> And next up after this… some Destiel! Peace out!


End file.
